Director of Infrastructure

Job description

At Sysdig, we believe cloud security isn't a compromise - it's a promise. From the start, our mission has been clear: to help organizations secure innovation in the cloud, the right way. We created Falco, the open standard for cloud threat detection, and continue to lead the cloud security market with runtime insights, open innovation, and agentic Al. Creators of technology trusted by over 60% of the Fortune 500, Sysdig gives teams the real-time clarity to move fast and defend what matters most. Culture matters here. We believe diversity fuels stronger ideas, and open dialogue drives sharper decisions. Recognized as a Best Place to Work and one of Deloitte's fastest-growing companies for the past 5 years, we're here to raise the standard for what cloud security and workplace culture should be. If you have the passion to dig deeper, the desire to challenge convention, and the curiosity to build something better, Sysdig is the right place for you. ### What you will do - **Infrastructure Strategy**: Own the end-to-end cloud infrastructure strategy across our global footprint including architecture, resourcing, maintenance, capacity planning, and vendor strategy across AWS, GCP, and/or Azure, IBM and OCI. - **Cost Optimization**: Drive a continuous cost-optimization program - rightsizing, reserved/committed spend, tagging and chargeback discipline, and eliminating waste, while protecting reliability and performance for a large-scale, multi-tenant platform. - **Executive Partnership**: Act as a key technical touchpoint for the executive team, translating infrastructure investment and tradeoffs into business terms, and presenting roadmaps that influence budget and planning decisions at the CTO/CFO level. - **Strategic Decision-Making**: Make and defend build-vs-buy, multi-cloud vs single-cloud, and centralize-vs-federate decisions, owning the tradeoff reasoning even under incomplete information or shifting priorities. - **Dependency & Constraint Navigatio**n: Masterfully manage complex cross-team dependencies with Security, Data, and Product Engineering, aggressively mitigating timeline shifts and infrastructure bandwidth constraints without sacrificing quality. - **Team Leadership**: Build, mentor, and lead a high-performing infrastructure/platform/SRE team; conduct performance reviews, provide routine coaching, and set individual expectations that balance career ambition with organizational goals. - **Risk & Resilience Posture**: Own infrastructure risk end-to-end — security posture, disaster recovery, compliance (GDPR and other EU regulatory considerations), and incident management for high-availability, fault-tolerant platforms. - **Hands-on Engagement**: Stay close to the metal by reviewing infrastructure-as-code and architecture developed by the team, jumping in hands-on when necessary to unblock milestones. ### What you will bring with you - 8+ years of infrastructure/platform engineering experience, with 4+ years directly leading infrastructure strategy and budget in a distributed systems environment. - **Cross-Functional Track Record**: Proven experience leading initiatives that span multiple departments, with a knack for unblocking bottlenecks and driving execution across matrixed organizations. - **Cost Optimization Rigor**: A track record of measurable cost optimization you can back with real numbers (e.g., "reduced cloud spend by 30% while scaling traffic 2x"), not just FinOps principles in the abstract. - **Executive Communication**: Demonstrated ability to present to and influence C-level executives you can speak both "engineering" and "board deck," and navigate sensitive tradeoffs with data-backed clarity. **Technical Domain Expertise:** - Deep hands-on experience with at least one major public cloud (AWS, GCP, or Azure), including IaC (Terraform/Pulumi or similar) and networking fundamentals. - Experience with containerized environments using Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies. - Solid understanding of designing scalable, high-performance, event-driven infrastructure and reusable cloud components. - Experience building high-availability, fault-tolerant platforms. - Experience managing distributed/European teams and navigating EU-specific considerations (data residency, GDPR, labor-law awareness a plus). - People management experience with a bias toward coaching and growing managers and engineers, not just directing them. - Experience or strong interest in cloud-native cybersecurity, specifically Cloud Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) or FinOps is a plus. ### What we look for - An inspiring infrastructure leader who is passionate about solving problems in complex distributed systems. - A relentless execution mindset that brings the structure and discipline required to drive initiatives to completion. - An empathetic negotiator who can balance internal team health and velocity with cost discipline and executive expectations. - A strategic thinker comfortable owning ambiguous, high-stakes tradeoffs with incomplete information. - High ownership of infrastructure reliability, cost efficiency, and delivery timelines. - A collaborative mindset: someone who prioritizes the team and fosters a culture of high performance without ego. ### When you join Sysdig, you can expect - Extra days off to prioritize your well-being - Mental health support for you and your family through the Modern Health app - Great compensation package