Cloud Operations Director (Architecture/Hands-On)

Proven 10+ years in cloud/platform operations, with 5+ years leading Azure operations teams in complex, high-availability environments.

Hands-on technical leader: primarily an operational/people leader (?80%), but still capable of engaging at keyboard level during escalations and guiding engineers through critical issues.

Deep operational ownership across Azure services (AKS, App Service, Functions, networking, Private Link, vWAN/hub-spoke, Front Door, Key Vault, Entra ID, SQL/Cosmos, Storage, Event Hubs, Service Bus).

Demonstrated leadership of large global teams (?25 engineers) with coverage across Canada + India time zones and responsibility for tight internal/external SLA adherence.

Strong in incident, problem, and change management, with a track record of improving MTTA/MTTR, reducing change failure rate, and driving operational excellence.

High proficiency in IaC (Terraform/Bicep) and automation-first practices; proven history of reducing toil via pipelines, runbooks, and standardized provisioning patterns.

Experience running critical production systems in cloud with accountability for provisioning, lifecycle management, DR/BCP, observability, compliance, and cost governance.

Strong command of security & compliance operations, including RBAC/PIM, Key Vault hygiene, vulnerability remediation, audit evidence management (SOC2/ISO27001/PCI exposure preferred).

Strategic operator who can define and execute a vision/roadmap for Cloud Operations, driving process maturity, governance, operational discipline, and continuous improvement.

Exceptional communicator capable of interfacing with executives, customers, vendors, MSPs, and internal engineering teams, with disciplined documentation and leadership presence.