Director of Cloud Operations | Firstup Jobs
Director of Cloud Operations
Remote - US
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Who We Are

At Firstup, our mission is to improve the employee experience at every moment that matters, large and small. As the communication pipeline for the world's workforce, we now serve 40 of the Fortune 100 companies, reaching and connecting more than 17 million employees daily.

Our employees are experts in the employee experience, workforce communications and technology. 
Joining Firstup means joining a movement to make work better for every worker. As the world’s first intelligent communication platform, Firstup meaningfully engages employees at every moment from hire to retire, and delivers engagement insights to help companies support, promote and retain their talent. Our movement has taken root and is evident in our world-class customer base. Now we need your help. Ready to make a difference in the world?


Job Summary: 

We are seeking a Director of Cloud Operations (CloudOps) to lead and evolve our cloud infrastructure and operational practices across a globally distributed SaaS platform. This is a hands-on leadership role responsible for ensuring the reliability, scalability, and efficiency of our systems running across multiple AWS regions in the United States and Europe.

As part of the senior leadership team, you will partner closely with Engineering, Security, and Product to strengthen operational excellence, enhance system observability, and drive continuous improvement in how we build and run services. You will lead a distributed team of engineers across the US and UK, fostering a high-performing, collaborative, and growth-oriented environment.

This role is ideal for a leader who combines deep technical expertise with a pragmatic approach to improving systems, processes, and team capabilities.

What You’ll Do

  • Cloud Platform & Reliability

  • Own the availability, performance, and resilience of our multi-region AWS platform.

  • Drive improvements in system reliability through well-defined SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, and proactive engineering practices.

  • Lead efforts to reduce MTTR and improve incident response effectiveness across the organization.

  • Guide architecture decisions for microservices, Kubernetes (EKS), and serverless workloads to ensure scalability and fault tolerance.

  • Observability & Incident Management

  • Advance our observability strategy using Datadog, ensuring actionable insights across infrastructure and applications.

  • Establish and refine incident management practices, including on-call processes, escalation paths, and post-incident reviews.

  • Act as an incident commander for critical events and contribute to the on-call rotation.

  • Operational Excellence & Efficiency

  • Elevate operational standards through automation, standardization, and adoption of modern best practices.

  • Drive cost optimization initiatives across AWS environments without compromising performance or reliability.

  • Leverage AI and automation to improve operational efficiency, accelerate root cause analysis, and enhance system insights.

  • Continuously improve CI/CD pipelines (CircleCI) and infrastructure-as-code practices (Terraform).

  • Team Leadership & Development

  • Lead, mentor, and support a distributed team of CloudOps engineers across the US and UK.

  • Foster a culture of accountability, learning, and continuous improvement.

  • Provide technical guidance while enabling the team to grow in ownership and capability.

  • Hybrid & Legacy Environment Support

  • Oversee ongoing operations of a legacy .NET-based solution hosted in private data centers in the US and Europe.

  • Ensure stability and support for existing customers while maintaining clear operational boundaries with the cloud platform.

    • What We’re Looking For

  • Experience

  • 10+ years in cloud infrastructure, SRE, or DevOps roles, with recent experience leading CloudOps/SRE teams.

  • Proven track record of leading operational or platform transformations in a SaaS environment.

  • Experience operating multi-region, customer-facing systems at scale.

  • Technical Expertise

  • Strong hands-on experience with:

  • AWS (multi-region architectures)

  • Kubernetes (EKS) and containerized environments

  • Infrastructure as Code (Terraform preferred)

  • CI/CD pipelines (CircleCI or similar)

  • Observability platforms (Datadog or equivalent)

  • Solid understanding of microservices and distributed systems design.

  • Familiarity with serverless architectures and modern cloud-native patterns.

  • Operational Leadership

  • Deep experience with incident management, on-call operations, and reliability engineering practices.

  • Strong understanding of SLO/SLI frameworks, monitoring strategies, and performance optimization.

  • Demonstrated ability to balance hands-on technical work with team leadership.

  • Leadership & Mindset

  • Collaborative, pragmatic leader who can influence across teams and functions.

  • Passion for building and supporting high-performing teams.

  • Focus on continuous improvement, with a bias toward measurable outcomes.

    • Why Join Us

  • Opportunity to shape and advance the operational foundation of a global SaaS platform.

  • Work with modern cloud technologies and a distributed, collaborative team.

  • Be a key member of the engineering leadership team with direct impact on reliability, scalability, and customer experience.

    • Firstup expects the base salary for this role to be between $200,000-$228,000. The starting rate of pay may vary based on factors including, but not limited to, position offered, location, education, training, and/or experience.

    Why Firstup?
     
    Because you care - about people, the work you do, and the connections you make. Work is such a large part of life; it only makes sense to make it awesome.
     
    If you want to engage brilliant minds in a high-growth and inclusive environment where ideas are rewarded regardless of who they come from, join us. This is a rapidly changing space so if you thrive on ambiguity, are hungry for a challenge, and have the guts to speak your mind, you could be a perfect fit.
     
    We offer an excellent PTO program, great health benefits, a casual and friendly environment, remote work, and a leadership team who truly believes in your growth – both personally and professionally.
     
    Firstup is committed to providing equal employment opportunities to all applicants for employment and to all employees, without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, protected disability, veteran status, or any other protected status in accordance with applicable federal, state or local laws.


    #LI-TM1
    #LI-Remote

    • To improve the employee experience at every moment that matters, large and small.

    • To make work better for every worker.

      • Every employee is an owner
      • Leadership is in our build
      • We win as a team
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    Working at Firstup

    Overall Culture Score

    4.8/5

    CEO Score

    Bill Schuh
    Top
    5%

    Bill Schuh
    Top 5% of Similar Sized Companies on Comparably

    Awards

    Reviews from current employees

    Our team is full of talented individuals with different backgrounds. I feel like we are all committed to helping each other out, jumping in when someone needs something and they are also funny, easy to work with and great people.
    I think the pay is fair and within market. The variable opportunity is also fair and is incentivizing to drive performance.
    We are a fully-remote organization with a few exceptions. I am used to working from home and comfortable managing my schedule and reaching out when I need something. The people here are really passionate about what we do and building great products and taking care of our customers.

    Diversity at Firstup

    Top 10%

    Gender Score

    As rated by current employees on Comparably

    Top 10%

    Diversity Score

    As rated by current employees on Comparably

    Perks and Benefits

    Health & Wellness
    Dental Insurance
    Vision Insurance
    Health Insurance
    Life Insurance
    Paid Time Off
    PTO / Vacation Policy
    Paid Holidays
    Maternity / Paternity Leave
    Financial Benefits
    401K / Retirement Plan
    Performance Bonus
    Office Perks
    Company Social Outings
    Legal Assistance
    Work From Home Policy
    Unique Office Space

    eNPS

    70
    eNPS Score
    75%Promoters
    20%Passive
    5%Detractors

    Firstup's Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is 70, as rated by 65 employees. This means 75% of Firstup employees would encourage their friends to become coworkers today.

    5 Cool Reasons to Work at Firstup

    1. Join us to create. Be a part of the workforce transforming the employee experience.
    2. We are the communication pipeline for the world! 40 of the Fortune 100 companies use Firstups's platform.
    3. As the experts in workforce comms, Firstup employees are creating change and having fun doing it!
    4. We strive daily to weave DEIB into our culture through our processes, people and decision-making.
    5. We offer world-class benefits, including our "Fruity Umbrella Drink Bonus." You get paid to take a vacation.