Senior Manager - Production Support

at  Vertex Inc

Job Description:
As the Senior Manager of Cloud Infrastructure Engineering, you’ll lead a newly launched department within our production support group, focused on automating and optimizing our infrastructure. You’ll manage a talented team of engineers, driving innovation and excellence in cloud infrastructure while ensuring the reliability and scalability of our production services. If you’re passionate about cloud technology, automation, and building high-performing teams, this is the role for you.

What You’ll Do:

• Lead a High-Impact Team: Manage and mentor a team of senior engineers, guiding them to design, deploy, and maintain cloud infrastructure solutions that support our business objectives.
• Cloud Infrastructure Strategy: Shape and evolve our cloud strategy, ensuring it aligns with broader business goals and leverages the latest technologies for scalability and efficiency.
• Automation Focus: Champion automation initiatives across the infrastructure, using tools like GitHub Actions, Ansible, Terraform, and Cloud-Init to drive operational excellence. Lead efforts to integrate tools and processes that reduce manual intervention, driving automation across maintenance, deployment, and monitoring tasks.
• Deploy and Optimize Cloud Services: Lead the team in building and maintaining systems on AWS, Azure, and GCP. You’ll be responsible for ensuring high availability, performance, and security of services like EC2, RDS, DynamoDB, S3, and more.
• Infrastructure as Code: Oversee the use of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices to automate deployments and ensure consistency across Linux and Windows environments.
• Drive High-Value Projects: Manage a portfolio of projects aimed at improving infrastructure performance and reliability. You’ll prioritize initiatives based on business impact and collaborate with technical program managers to ensure on-time, on-budget delivery.
• Agile Practices: Lead the team in Agile methodologies, including SAFE, Scrum, and stand-ups, ensuring backlog grooming and direct collaboration with program managers to deliver results.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with Product Management, Program Management, and Customer Success to deliver seamless cloud infrastructure solutions that support high-quality customer experiences.
• Stakeholder Communication: Ensure clear, consistent communication with both internal and external stakeholders, keeping them informed on the status of infrastructure projects and support initiatives.
• Optimize Performance: Continuously analyze and improve critical service paths to eliminate bottlenecks and enhance the performance of our cloud services.
• SLAs & OLAs Management: Ensure that production services meet or exceed internally and externally prescribed SLAs and OLAs, with a focus on performance, availability, and incident/problem resolution.
• Mentorship & Growth: Support and coach team members in their career development, fostering a culture of learning and innovation.

What You’ll Need:

• Proven Leadership: Extensive experience leading teams of senior engineers to design, deploy, and manage cloud infrastructure on platforms like AWS, Azure, and GCP.
• Cloud Expertise: Deep knowledge of AWS services (Elastic Load Balancers, EC2, RDS, DynamoDB, S3, Lambda), as well as experience with other cloud platforms such as Azure and GCP.
• Automation & IaC: Proficiency in GitHub Actions, Ansible, Terraform, and Cloud-Init to deliver Infrastructure as Code and automate infrastructure management.
• Agile Leadership: Strong understanding of Agile practices, including SAFE and Scrum, with experience in backlog grooming, story pointing, and collaborating with Technical Program Managers.
• 6+ years of experience managing cloud infrastructure teams, with a focus on delivering automated, scalable solutions.
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field or equivalent experience.
• A track record of success in delivering projects on time, within budget, and aligned with business objectives.

Bonus Points:

• Experience with full-stack cloud engineering on AWS, including database services like Aurora and DynamoDB.
• Certifications in AWS, Azure, or DevOps (e.g., AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Microsoft Certified DevOps Engineer, or Terraform Associate).

The Winning Way behaviors that all Vertex employees need to meet the expectations of each other, our customers, and our partners.

• Communicate with Clarity - Be clear, concise and actionable. Be relentlessly constructive. Seek and provide meaningful feedback.
• Act with Urgency - Adopt an agile mentality - frequent iterations, improved speed, resilience. 80/20 rule – better is the enemy of done. Don’t spend hours when minutes are enough.
• Work with Purpose - Exhibit a “We Can” mindset. Results outweigh effort. Everyone understands how their role contributes. Set aside personal objectives for team results.
• Drive to Decision - Cut the swirl with defined deadlines and decision points. Be clear on individual accountability and decision authority. Guided by a commitment to and accountability for customer outcomes.
• Own the Outcome - Defined milestones, commitments and intended results. Assess your work in context, if you’re unsure, ask. Demonstrate unwavering support for decisions.

• Lead a High-Impact Team: Manage and mentor a team of senior engineers, guiding them to design, deploy, and maintain cloud infrastructure solutions that support our business objectives.
• Cloud Infrastructure Strategy: Shape and evolve our cloud strategy, ensuring it aligns with broader business goals and leverages the latest technologies for scalability and efficiency.
• Automation Focus: Champion automation initiatives across the infrastructure, using tools like GitHub Actions, Ansible, Terraform, and Cloud-Init to drive operational excellence. Lead efforts to integrate tools and processes that reduce manual intervention, driving automation across maintenance, deployment, and monitoring tasks.
• Deploy and Optimize Cloud Services: Lead the team in building and maintaining systems on AWS, Azure, and GCP. You’ll be responsible for ensuring high availability, performance, and security of services like EC2, RDS, DynamoDB, S3, and more.
• Infrastructure as Code: Oversee the use of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices to automate deployments and ensure consistency across Linux and Windows environments.
• Drive High-Value Projects: Manage a portfolio of projects aimed at improving infrastructure performance and reliability. You’ll prioritize initiatives based on business impact and collaborate with technical program managers to ensure on-time, on-budget delivery.
• Agile Practices: Lead the team in Agile methodologies, including SAFE, Scrum, and stand-ups, ensuring backlog grooming and direct collaboration with program managers to deliver results.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with Product Management, Program Management, and Customer Success to deliver seamless cloud infrastructure solutions that support high-quality customer experiences.
• Stakeholder Communication: Ensure clear, consistent communication with both internal and external stakeholders, keeping them informed on the status of infrastructure projects and support initiatives.
• Optimize Performance: Continuously analyze and improve critical service paths to eliminate bottlenecks and enhance the performance of our cloud services.
• SLAs & OLAs Management: Ensure that production services meet or exceed internally and externally prescribed SLAs and OLAs, with a focus on performance, availability, and incident/problem resolution.
• Mentorship & Growth: Support and coach team members in their career development, fostering a culture of learning and innovation