What are the responsibilities and job description for the Principal Cloud Platform Operations Lead position at Herring Bank?
Benefits:
- 401(k)
- 401(k) matching
- Dental insurance
- Health insurance
- Paid time off
- Vision insurance
Principal Cloud Platform Operations Lead
Herring Bank | Information Technology
About the Role
Herring Bank is seeking a hands-on Principal Cloud Platform Operations Lead to oversee the bank’s cloud platform, DevOps, database, Linux, application operations, and deployment automation functions.
This is a senior-level player/coach role requiring both technical leadership and hands-on operational expertise. The ideal candidate will lead engineers, establish technical direction, review deployment strategies, approve production changes, and actively participate in troubleshooting and operational governance.
This position will play a key role in modernizing infrastructure and application operations while maintaining the operational discipline required within a regulated financial institution.
Texas-based candidates are preferred. Hybrid or remote work may be considered for exceptional candidates; however, regular travel to Amarillo and other Herring Bank locations is required. An in-person interview will be required prior to any offer being extended.
What You’ll Do
Cloud Platform & DevOps Leadership
- Lead operational direction for cloud-hosted platforms and deployment automation
- Build and govern CI/CD pipelines for application and infrastructure deployments
- Establish Infrastructure-as-Code standards and deployment practices
- Support modernization efforts toward containerized and automated production environments
- Define deployment workflows, rollback procedures, monitoring standards, and operational support practices
Platform Modernization & Operations
- Lead modernization of Linux-based and application-hosting environments
- Support and improve containerized deployment practices
- Establish operational standards for runtime support, patching, monitoring, backups, and lifecycle management
- Balance modernization initiatives with production stability and business continuity
Release Engineering & Change Governance
- Oversee production deployment pipelines for cloud, application, and mobile workloads
- Review infrastructure code, deployment changes, and automation prior to production release
- Ensure releases are properly tested, documented, approved, and supportable
- Review and approve change management requests while ensuring compliance with operational controls and audit requirements
Database, Linux & Application Support
- Provide leadership over database operations and Linux platform administration
- Ensure production systems are monitored, secured, patched, and maintained according to operational standards
- Improve application operations through enhanced monitoring, documentation, and deployment consistency
- Support legacy environments while driving practical modernization initiatives
Monitoring, Reliability & Incident Response
- Improve observability, alerting, dashboards, and service health monitoring
- Participate directly in major incident response and root cause analysis
- Translate operational lessons learned into improved automation, procedures, and reliability standards
- Help define operational metrics surrounding deployment quality, vulnerability remediation, and platform stability
What You’ll Bring
- Strong technical leadership with the ability to remain hands-on in engineering and operational functions
- Deep understanding of cloud infrastructure, DevOps, CI/CD, Linux administration, and application operations
- Experience operating in regulated or high-control environments with strong governance expectations
- Ability to communicate effectively with engineers, executives, auditors, vendors, and business stakeholders
- Strong troubleshooting, operational governance, and production support experience
- Ability to mentor technical teams while driving modernization and operational excellence
Qualifications
Required Qualifications
- 10 years of progressive experience in cloud operations, DevOps, platform engineering, Linux administration, infrastructure engineering, or related technical roles
- 5 years of experience leading technical teams or serving as a senior technical lead
- Strong hands-on experience with cloud infrastructure and production cloud operations
- Experience building and supporting CI/CD pipelines
- Experience with Infrastructure-as-Code tools such as Terraform or similar platforms
- Strong Linux administration experience
- Experience with container technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes, Podman, or similar platforms
- Experience supporting relational database platforms and production application environments
- Experience reviewing production deployments, infrastructure code, and operational changes
- Understanding of change management, operational controls, audit expectations, and risk management
- Strong written and verbal communication skills
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience within banking, financial services, healthcare, insurance, or other regulated industries
- Experience with AWS or similar enterprise cloud platforms
- Experience with mobile application deployment pipelines
- Experience with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, or similar tooling
- Experience with Kubernetes, ECS, EKS, OpenShift, or similar orchestration platforms
- Experience with secrets management, artifact repositories, image scanning, and software supply chain controls
- Experience modernizing legacy Linux-hosted applications
- Relevant cloud, Linux, DevOps, or infrastructure certifications are a plus
Location & Travel
- Texas-based candidates preferred
- Hybrid/remote may be considered for exceptional candidates
- Regular travel to Amarillo and other Herring Bank locations required
Flexible work from home options available.