DevOps Manager

Position: Manager of Cloud & Automation

About the Role

We’re looking for a technical leader to guide a skilled engineering team responsible for building, automating, and running a large, complex cloud platform. You’ll combine people leadership with deep cloud expertise — designing and implementing modern infrastructure-as-code practices, coaching engineers, and ensuring high availability and compliance in a regulated environment.

This is a true “player–coach” opportunity for someone who enjoys both shaping strategy and contributing to the resolution of complex technical challenges with your team.

What You’ll Do

• Direct and mentor a team of engineers managing a mission-critical, cloud-native infrastructure.
• Architect, deploy, and maintain automated workflows for provisioning, configuration, and ongoing operations of cloud services using infrastructure-as-code tools.
• Establish a library of reusable automation scripts, templates, and procedures to accelerate delivery and improve reliability.
• Oversee DevOps activities involving containers, messaging platforms, and CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes, Kafka, Jenkins).
• Drive upgrades, patching, disaster recovery, and lifecycle planning for cloud resources to ensure resilience and compliance.
• Forecast capacity requirements and align them with business growth.
• Build roadmaps for future technology adoption, security controls, and process improvements.
• Act as escalation point for complex technical issues and provide guidance across internal teams.
• Communicate status, risks, and recommendations clearly to senior stakeholders.
• Set priorities, manage workloads, and ensure the team delivers high-quality outcomes on schedule.
• Support on-call and maintenance windows while promoting healthy work–life balance for the team.

What You’ll Bring

• Proven track record leading highly technical teams through implementing and maintaining 24×7, mission-critical cloud or virtualized infrastructures.
• Deep knowledge of modern infrastructure design (servers, networks, operating systems, storage) and automation frameworks.
• Expertise with Terraform, Kubernetes, Jenkins, Kafka, GitHub, and configuration management tools (Chef, Puppet, Ansible, etc.).
• Hands-on experience with public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and infrastructure-as-code practices.
• Strong communication and stakeholder-management skills — able to influence and collaborate across distributed teams.
• Familiarity with Agile/Scrum approaches to managing work.
• Comfort working under pressure, meeting deadlines, and ensuring compliance with controls and security requirements (CIS, NIST, or similar).
• Bachelor’s degree in a technical field (or equivalent experience).
• 7 years in IT operations/administration of cloud or virtualized systems.

Compensation

• $160-180k base
• 15% bonus
• 6% match on 401k
• Health, Vision, Dental and Life

This is a hybrid role in the downtown Chicago area.