Sr. Director, Cloud Infrastructure

Who We Are

Oncourse Home Solutions (OHS) is a people-centric organization that is owned by private equity firm, Apax Partners operating under the brands American Water Resources, Pivotal Home Solutions and American Home Solutions. We do what is right for our people so they can do their best when serving our 1.4+ million customers across the U.S. Our mission is to help homeowners navigate the unexpected, reduce costs, and make homeownership enjoyable for all. Our vision is to make our products and services accessible to all by becoming the most forward-thinking and community-driven home solutions organization of the 21st century. We are committed to fostering an environment that embraces diversity in all forms, where our employees, customers and partners feel valued, respected, and supported.

We partner with cities, utilities, insurance providers, retailers, financial service companies and member associations to help them maintain and protect their customers’ most important asset—their home. Our passion for empowering customers to confidently run their households is what drives us. When our customers need help with home maintenance, repair, or coverage, OHS is there. This is what it means to be an ‘Oncourse Super’—Successful, United, Progressive, Empathetic, Reliable. Supers get it done. We sweat homeownership so our customers don’t have to. We view every day as an opportunity to step up, step out, and remind others that they’re in this together, to stay on course.

We are proud equal opportunity employer, and our employment decisions are based on business needs, job requirements and individual qualifications without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, ancestry, marital status, parental status, mental or physical disability, military or veteran status, or any other basis protected by federal, state, or local law.  OHS is committed to recruiting and retaining talented applicants and to providing all employees with aworkplace free from discrimination and/or harassment.

Located at our office in Naperville, IL or Mt. Laurel, NJ, our office environment is a key driver of our company culture and employee experience. A regular in-office HYBRID model is required (generally in office Tues/Wed/Thurs. and remote M & F).

Position Summary

The Sr. Director, Cloud Infrastructure will lead both in-house and outsourced teams and stay up to date with relevant technologies and trends to deliver infrastructure projects and systems that meet the needs of our business. This position will maintain partnership with the Information Security team to ensure that infrastructure design and operations minimize cybersecurity risks.

Responsibilities

• Provide oversight and management of OHS Cloud and Network, defining the strategy, delivery organization, and executing the strategy for all OHS systems and support functions.
• Lead teams implementing and maintaining our cloud technology and site-based infrastructure.
• Own the cloud and infrastructure strategy and develop a reference architecture working with Cloud Enterprise Architect.
• Ensure alignment of Cloud and Infra team with the projects teams to support new business initiatives driven across IT organization.
• Design, plan, oversee, and participate in network technology upgrade or expansion projects, including implementation of hardware, software, cloud apps, and relevant testing.
• Proactively participate in architecture discussions offering elegant solutions to complex problems with an eye on the future of technology and trends.
• Ensure that appropriate ITIL processes (aligned to Quality policies) are followed to maintain compliance.
• Proactively identify aging or redundant technologies within the existing technology inventory, establish a sunset program to retire outdated technologies and applications, and replace them with newer products. Directly manage multiple concurrent projects, both simple and extremely complex, ensuring that the relevant governance and control processes are invoked and reflected for projects.
• Ensure that a suite of Infrastructure Operational metrics is gathered, reflecting progress and responsible for tier two Infrastructure and Network Operations teams, supporting multiple business-critical applications.
• Manage the service and performance of onshore and offshore teams supporting all services and manage contracts, SOWs, and MSAs for long-term and short-term partner providers.
• Influence policy and strategy and partner with senior management to establish foundations to evolve maturity of our operating model and services to enable the long-term business strategy from IT.
• Define and establish benchmarks and quality measures for the area of responsibility and participate in disaster recovery and contingency planning with collective availability of IT infrastructure (Self-managed or SaaS/PaaS) of over 99.95%.
• Ensure that Information Security Technology controls and processes are followed, architected, and tested to proper acceptance of code in the cloud environment.
• Recruit and hire engineering staff capable of delivering cloud services in a DevOps model.
• Launching new cloud services and establishing operational excellence.
• Defining OKRs and KPIs to inform decision making and prioritization.
• Experience developing or leading cross-functional teams of technologists
• Effectively work with geographically dispersed teams across In-house, Contractors, and managed services. Effectively manage 3rd party vendor relationships, demonstrating excellent vendor management skill
  
  

We're Excited if This is You

Experience And Qualifications Of The Role

• 15 years of experience in technology roles with a minimum of 10 years in cloud and network architecture.
• 5+ years leading and directly managing both internal staff of more than five employees and external vendors in the delivery of cloud & network infrastructure systems and services.
• Expert level knowledge of cloud infrastructure, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure
• In-depth understanding of network infrastructure, including routing, switching, and firewalls
• Deep expertise building and operating large-scale high-performance environments with distributed systems and cloud technologies (AWS (Amazon Web Services), GCP, Azure, etc.)
• Proficiency in using AWS services e.g., VPC/SG, EC2, S3, Autoscaling, CloudFormation, DMS, RDS (Relational Database Service), Aurora, CloudTrail, CloudWatch, Docker, Lambda, Glue, Sage Maker, API GW
• Proven experience in managing multiple concurrent projects, both simple and extremely complex.
• Strong knowledge of cloud and network infrastructure policies, procedures, standards, and specifications.
• Excellent vendor management skills.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills.
• Ability to work effectively with geographically dispersed teams across In-house, Contractors, and managed services.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Experience working at code level
• Ability to influence policy and strategy and partner with senior management to establish foundations to evolve maturity of our operating model and services to enable the long-term business strategy from IT.
  
  

Computer Skills Needed To Perform This Job

• Deep expertise building and operating large-scale high-performance environments with distributed systems and cloud technologies (AWS (Amazon Web Services), GCP, Azure, etc.)
  
  

Certificates, Licenses, Registrations

• AWS and or Microsoft Azure Solution Architect
• CCNA/CCNP/CCIE or similar certification is plus
• Cloud Operations certification is a plus
• ITIL Certification is plus
  
  

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science (required)

Competencies

Action Oriented - Enjoys working hard; is action oriented and full of energy for the things that he/she sees as challenging; not fearful of acting with a minimum of planning; seizes more opportunities than others.

Dealing with Ambiguity - Can effectively cope with change; can shift gears comfortably; can decide and act without having the total picture; isn't upset when things are up in the air; doesn't have to finish things before moving on; can comfortably handle risk and uncertainty.

Customer Focus - Is dedicated to meeting the expectations and requirements of internal and external customers; gets firsthand customer information and uses it for improvements in products and services; acts with customers in mind; establishes and maintains effective relationships with customers and gains their trust and respect.

Timely Decision Making - Makes decisions in a timely manner, sometimes with incomplete information and under tight deadlines and pressure; able to make a quick decision.

Peer Relationships - Can quickly find common ground and solve problems for the good of all; can represent his/her own interests and yet be fair to other groups; can solve problems with peers with a minimum of noise; is seen as a team player and is cooperative; easily gains trust and support of peers; encourages collaboration; can be candid with peers.

Building Effective Teams - Blends people into teams when needed; creates strong morale and spirit in his/her team; shares wins and successes; fosters open dialogue; lets people finish and be responsible for their work; defines success in terms of the whole team; creates a feeling of belonging in the team.

Communicate Effectively - Is able to clearly and succinctly communicate verbally and in writing in a variety of settings and styles; can get messages across that have the desired effect.