Vice President IT Cloud and DevOps Manager/AWS/AI

We are seeking a dynamic and hands-on Vice President, IT Cloud and DevOps Manager to lead our cloud and DevOps strategy while managing a small, highly skilled team. This role is ideal for a true player-coach who can combine leadership with deep technical expertise to drive innovation across cloud infrastructure, application development, and AI initiatives. The successful candidate will be a technical evangelist, passionate about modern cloud architecture, automation, and emerging technologies.

Primary Responsibilities

• Lead and mentor a small team (currently 2 engineers) while remaining hands-on in architecture, design, implementation, and support.
• Define and execute the organization's cloud and DevOps strategy, ensuring scalability, security, and cost efficiency.
• Drive modernization initiatives, including re-platforming legacy applications to cloud-native and serverless architectures.
• Partner with development teams to enable CI/CD pipelines, automated deployments, and infrastructure-as-code practices.
• Oversee cloud security, compliance, and governance across AWS and emerging Azure services.
• Champion AI and automation initiatives to optimize operations and enhance application capabilities.
• Manage and optimize Cloud Financial Ops Program to reduce cloud costs, ensure efficient resource utilization, and provide executive tracking and reporting.
• Build and integrate monitoring, alerting, and performance systems for cloud and application environments.
• Stay ahead of industry trends and emerging technologies, acting as a thought leader within the organization.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in IT infrastructure, cloud engineering, and DevOps, with at least 3 years in a leadership role.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science or related field required.
• Proven hands-on expertise with AWS services (EC2, VPC, Lambda, API Gateway, Fargate/EKS, RDS, S3, Route 53, etc.).
• Proven experience utilizing C#, Python and scripting (PS preferred).
• Experience with CI/CD tools (Azure DevOps preferred) and infrastructure-as-code (CloudFormation and Terraform required).
• Deep understanding of cloud security, compliance, and vulnerability management.
• Familiarity with AI/ML concepts and their integration into cloud environments is a strong plus.
• Excellent leadership, communication, and stakeholder management skills.
• Relevant certifications (AWS Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer, etc.) are highly desirable.
• Multi cloud experience would be a big plus. Our infrastructure runs in AWS but we are exploring services and opportunities in the Azure space.
• Exposure or experience with Systems Engineering preferred (Windows, Linux, Virtualization)
• Previous experience working in SOC1/SOX regulated environments is nice to have along with experience adhering to regulatory, compliance, and cyber security related requirements in the infrastructure.