Senior Director, Cloud Operations

Job Summary:

The Senior Director of Cloud Operations is responsible for the operational integrity, performance, and reliability of enterprise cloud environments. This role leads a global, data-driven operations team with a strong emphasis on incident management, service continuity, and continuous improvement. This role reports directly to the Vice President of Cloud. This position will be responsible for leading a global team of cloud engineers, SRE practice, service management tools and operations using a metrics-first approach.

What Your Impact Will Look Like:

• Cloud Infrastructure Operations
• Oversee the daily operations of cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP), ensuring high availability and performance across global regions.
• Lead the development and execution of operational runbooks, SOPs, and escalation paths.
• Incident Management & Response
• Own the end-to-end incident management lifecycle: detection, triage, escalation, resolution, and post-incident review.
• Lead a global incident response team with 24/7 coverage, ensuring seamless handoffs across time zones.
• Implement real-time monitoring, alerting, and automated remediation to reduce MTTD and MTTR.
• Use data analytics to identify incident trends, recurring issues, and systemic risks.
• Conduct blameless postmortems and ensure corrective actions are prioritized and tracked to closure.
• Data-Driven Operational Leadership
• Build and lead a global team of cloud engineers, SREs, and operations analysts using a metrics-first approach.
• Define and track operational KPIs (e.g., uptime, incident frequency, resolution time, change success rate) to drive accountability and performance.
• Leverage dashboards and analytics platforms (e.g., Datadog, Grafana, Splunk, ServiceNow) to provide real-time visibility into system health and team performance.
• Use data to inform staffing models, on-call rotations, and workload balancing across regions.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement through data-backed retrospectives and operational reviews.
• AI enabled Focus
• Drive AI and ML adoption in operational workflows (e.g., predictive monitoring, incident pattern analysis etc.,) to improve uptime and automate repetitive tasks.
• Define and execute AI-driven observability strategy using tools like AIOps platforms for intelligent alerting and root cause analysis.
• Collaborate with Engineering, Security, and Product teams to embed AI-enabled automation in deployment pipelines, change management etc.,.
• Establish and maintain SLOs/SLAs leveraging AI-generated insights to prioritize engineering work that improves reliability and customer experience.
• Oversee incident management, post-mortems, and continuous improvement, incorporating AI tools for impact analysis and knowledge retention.
• Operational Governance
• Define and enforce SLAs, SLOs, and operational KPIs.
• Ensure compliance with security, regulatory, and audit requirements.
• Manage change control, configuration management, and release processes to minimize operational risk.
• Cost & Vendor Management
• Monitor and optimize cloud spend through cost governance and usage analysis.
• Manage vendor relationships, contracts, and service-level agreements.
• Collaboration & Communication
• Partner with engineering, security, and business teams to align operations with product and service goals.
• Provide regular reporting and updates to executive leadership on operational health, risks, and incident trends.

You Will Love This Job If You Have:

• Education
• Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, Information Systems, or related field.
• Experience
• 14+ years in IT operations, with 7+ years in cloud infrastructure and operations leadership.
• Proven experience leading global teams and managing high-severity incidents in large-scale environments.
• Skills
• Deep expertise in cloud operations, incident response, and service reliability.
• Strong knowledge of ITIL, SRE, and DevOps practices.
• Proficiency in operational analytics and observability tools.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Strong presentation skills, including experience presenting to large global audiences.
• Certifications (Preferred)
• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
• Azure Administrator Associate
• ITIL Foundation or Practitioner

The Benefits: At Granicus, we offer a comprehensive and flexible benefits package designed to support your well-being, growth, and work-life balance.

Here's what you can expect as a India-based team member:

Flexibility & Balance

• Paid Time Off– Take the time you need to rest, recharge, and live your life.
• Company-Wide Wellbeing Days – Paid days off to unplug and focus on your mental health.
• Work From Home Reimbursement – Support a productive home office environment.

Health & Wellness

• Private healthcare benefits - Comprehensive coverage for you and your family.
• On-Demand Mental Health Support – Access to Headspace and other wellness tools.
• Fitness Reimbursement & Cycle Program – Stay active, your way.
• Critical Illness and Life Insurance Benefits

Family & Future

• Paid Parental Leave - For both birthing and non-birthing parents.
• Pension plan with employer contributions

Growth & Recognition

• Online Learning Platforms – Fuel your professional development.
• Competitive Salary & Bonuses – Your contributions are valued and rewarded.