Director, Technical Operations - Infrastructure

About this role

Overview The Director of Technical Ops - Infrastructure is a senior technology leader responsible for the reliability, scalability, performance, and security of API's cloud-based platform and underlying infrastructure. Operating across our New York and Pune, India offices, this leader will manage and develop geographically distributed engineering and operations teams, driving a culture of operational excellence, continuous improvement, and high availability. The Director will own governance and operational management of our AWS cloud environment, oversee system reliability and service continuity, and serve as the primary bridge between technology operations and the broader business. This role requires a seasoned technology executive who combines deep cloud expertise with strong people leadership, financial acumen, and the ability to partner with executive stakeholders to align infrastructure strategy with organizational goals. Essential Functions: Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Leadership & Team Management Lead, mentor, and develop distributed technical operations teams across New York and Pune, India, fostering a collaborative, high-performance culture that bridges time zones and cultural contexts Define team structure, roles, and career development frameworks for engineers and site reliability engineers (SREs) across both locations Establish clear goals, KPIs, and performance expectations for the technical operations organization; conduct regular performance reviews and provide ongoing coaching and feedback Partner with HR and talent acquisition to recruit and retain top-tier technical talent in both New York and Pune; build a deep bench of operational expertise across the organization Facilitate cross-functional collaboration between the technical operations team and product engineering, security, data, and business teams to ensure operational requirements are integrated into the software development lifecycle Cloud Infrastructure & AWS Own the governance and operational management of API's AWS cloud environment, including multi-account strategy, security controls, compliance posture, and cost management Drive cloud cost optimization efforts including Reserved Instance and Savings Plans management, rightsizing, resource tagging governance, and FinOps practices to maximize infrastructure ROI Establish and enforce AWS security best practices including IAM least-privilege access, SCPs, GuardDuty, Security Hub, AWS Config, and CloudTrail audit logging across all environments Oversee multi-region and multi-availability-zone operational strategies to support disaster recovery objectives, minimize RTO/RPO, and maintain continuous service availability for global customers Evaluate new AWS services and infrastructure technologies; assess organizational fit and present adoption recommendations to senior leadership System Reliability & Service Continuity Define and own SLAs and uptime commitments for all production systems; establish reliability targets in partnership with product engineering leadership and communicate performance against those targets to executive stakeholders Oversee the monitoring and observability ecosystem using tools such as CloudWatch, Datadog, Grafana, or equivalent platforms to ensure proactive detection and rapid response to operational issues Drive capacity planning efforts, ensuring infrastructure scales efficiently to support business growth without compromising performance or cost targets Own the IT disaster recovery and business continuity plan for infrastructure systems; lead periodic tabletop exercises and failover testing to validate recovery capabilities Strategy, Governance & Stakeholder Engagement Develop and execute the multi-year technical operations roadmap in alignment with the company's product strategy, growth objectives, and technology vision Provide regular operational reporting to senior leadership team, including infrastructure health dashboards, cost reports, and strategic initiative progress updates Lead technology vendor relationships for cloud, infrastructure tooling, and managed services; oversee contract negotiations, SLA management, and vendor performance reviews Ensure compliance with relevant regulatory and data privacy requirements (SOC 2, GDPR, PCI-DSS, ISO 27001) as they apply to infrastructure and operations; partner with the security team on audit readiness Own the IT disaster recovery and business continuity plan for infrastructure systems; lead periodic tabletop exercises and failover testing to validate recovery capabilities Manage the technical operations budget, including headcount, tooling, and cloud spend; provide accurate forecasting and variance analysis to finance and leadership stakeholders Competencies Proven leadership ability with experience building, scaling, and retaining high-performing technical teams across multiple geographies and time zones Executive presence and strong communication skills; able to translate complex infrastructure and operational concepts into clear, actionable narratives for C-suite and board-level audiences Strategic mindset balanced with operational discipline — equally effective setting a multi-year infrastructure vision and ensuring day-to-day operational excellence across distributed teams Deep technical credibility with AWS cloud services, cloud-native application patterns, networking, and security; respected by engineering teams for substantive technical knowledge Strong financial acumen with experience managing multi-million-dollar cloud and infrastructure budgets and driving cost optimization without compromising reliability Culturally aware and skilled at leading geographically distributed teams; experienced navigating the logistical and interpersonal dynamics of cross-timezone collaboration between US and India-based teams Data-driven decision maker who leverages metrics, SLOs, and operational KPIs to p