Head of Cloud Infrastructure (Director Level)

YipitData is the leading market research and analytics firm for the disruptive economy, recently raising up to $475M from The Carlyle Group at a valuation over $1B. They analyze billions of alternative data points daily to provide insights on ridesharing, e-commerce, payments, and more, using proprietary technology trusted by global investment funds and corporations.

About The Role:

YipitData is hiring a Head of Cloud Infrastructure (Director Level) to lead the modernization and scaling of shared infrastructure for data-intensive products and engineering. Reporting to the Chief Architect, this player-coach role involves:

• Setting and executing a prioritized cloud-infrastructure modernization roadmap for AWS, Kubernetes, and Terraform.
• Leading a small, high-leverage global team spanning cloud platform, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and DevOps.
• Improving developer velocity and platform experience through reliable paved roads, reusable infrastructure, self-service workflows, and faster feedback loops.
• Establishing formal reliability practices, including service ownership, SLIs/SLOs, incident management, error-budget practices, observability, and accountable post-incident follow-through.
• Owning disaster-recovery strategy and readiness, including recovery objectives, testing, automation, and resilience gap closure.
• Designing a sustainable 24/7 operational model, including on-call responsibilities, escalation paths, and incident leadership.
• Partnering with the Chief Architect and engineering leaders to define platform priorities and clarify ownership boundaries.
• Defining baselines and measuring progress across delivery performance, developer experience, platform adoption, reliability, operational health, and cloud unit economics.
• Improving cloud efficiency through better cost attribution, capacity planning, Kubernetes resource utilization, automation, and measurable savings.

This is a remote-friendly opportunity that can be based in NYC (headquarters), other office hubs, or anywhere in the US. US working hours are expected with sufficient overlap for global collaboration. No travel required.

Key Responsibilities:

• Set and execute a prioritized cloud-infrastructure modernization roadmap for AWS, Kubernetes, and Terraform.
• Lead a small, high-leverage global team of 3–10 engineers in cloud platform, SRE, and DevOps.
• Improve developer velocity and platform experience through reliable paved roads, reusable infrastructure, self-service workflows, and faster feedback loops.
• Establish and mature formal reliability practices, including service ownership, SLIs/SLOs, incident management, error-budget practices, observability, and accountable post-incident follow-through.
• Own disaster-recovery strategy and readiness, including recovery objectives, testing, automation, and closure of identified resilience gaps.
• Design a sustainable 24/7 operational model, including on-call responsibilities, escalation paths, incident leadership, and healthy collaboration across a global team.
• Partner with the Chief Architect and engineering leaders to define platform priorities, clarify ownership boundaries, and help application/data teams operate effectively on shared infrastructure.
• Define baselines and measure progress across delivery performance, developer experience, platform adoption, reliability, operational health, and cloud unit economics.
• Improve cloud efficiency through better cost attribution, capacity planning, Kubernetes resource utilization, automation, and measurable savings.

Qualifications:

You are likely to succeed if:

• You have 6+ years of relevant experience in infrastructure, SRE, platform engineering, or developer productivity, with hands-on expertise in AWS, Kubernetes, and Terraform.
• You have led approximately 3–10 infrastructure, platform, SRE, or DevOps engineers and are excited to remain a player-coach within a collaborative team.
• You have built or materially transformed a platform function and operated mature, business-critical production infrastructure.
• You have helped a data-intensive SaaS, analytics, or similarly complex technology organization scale through rapid growth.
• You have owned formal reliability practices, including SLOs, incident management, production operations, and disaster recovery, and can design a sustainable on-call model.
• You have improved developer velocity or platform experience through self-service capabilities, standardized workflows, internal platform adoption, or measurable reductions in engineering friction.
• You can translate technical strategy into an actionable roadmap, make thoughtful tradeoffs, and influence stakeholders through clear communication and credible technical judgment.
• You have delivered measurable cloud-cost or infrastructure-efficiency improvements and understand how to optimize technology costs.
• You hold a bachelor’s degree or have equivalent practical experience.