About the Role

As a Senior Engineering Manager for CloudOps, you'll lead the team responsible for the internal platforms, tools, and paved paths that power engineering at Ellevation. Your team's mission is to build the golden paths that make it easy - and fast - for product teams to build, deploy, observe, and operate services reliably on AWS.

You'll be accountable for evolving our cloud foundations, developer tooling, CI/CD pipelines, observability defaults, and internal developer experience. You'll help transform a landscape that includes legacy systems and "pets-style" infrastructure into a modern, scalable, well-supported platform that enables safe velocity across engineering.

In the near term, you'll also shepherd improvements to our Cloud Development Environment (CDE) - the Windows-based workflow required for legacy .NET Framework development - while leading the organization toward long-term modernization and eventual retirement of those systems.

Above all, this role is about shaping culture: moving CloudOps from a reactive, security-centric posture to a platform mindset grounded in enablement, thoughtful tradeoffs, and "making the right way the easy way." You'll help the team grow its confidence, challenge assumptions, and build for the future.

About You

• Think beyond infrastructure. You approach platform work with a product mindset, focusing on developer experience, reliability, and ease of adoption.
• Believe in paved paths. You want to create delightful, opinionated workflows that reduce cognitive load and empower teams to move quickly and safely.
• Are energized by modernization. Whether it's legacy infrastructure, brittle workflows, or old deployment patterns, you're excited to bring clarity, challenge status quo decisions, and lead change.
• Balance tradeoffs well. Security, reliability, cost, and velocity all matter - and you know how to weigh them in context, not as absolutes.
• Lead with clarity and heart. You communicate well, mentor effectively, build trust, and help teams navigate ambiguity and cultural shifts.
• Bring technical depth. You understand cloud-native architecture, AWS, IaC, CI/CD, observability, and modern DevEx practices, even if you're not hands-on every day.
• Embrace our mission. You believe deeply in helping educators and students succeed, and you're excited to build the platforms that help us reach them.

What You'll Do

• Lead and grow the CloudOps (Platform & DevEx) team, providing clarity, coaching, mentorship, and a strong sense of purpose.
• Build and evolve paved paths for service creation, deployment, observability, and operations - defining "the Ellevation way" to build software.
• Improve developer experience across the stack: container workflows, repo templates, CI/CD automation, observability defaults, and internal tooling.
• Stabilize and enhance the Cloud Development Environment (CDE) for .NET Framework development while guiding the organization toward long-term modernization and retirement of legacy systems.
• Drive modernization of legacy infrastructure and help the team shift from "pets vs. cattle" to scalable, reliable, well-automated patterns.
• Partner with product engineering teams to understand friction, remove obstacles, and co-create better workflows and tools.
• Define and measure DevEx outcomes using frameworks like SPACE, focusing on satisfaction, flow, clarity, and feedback loops.
• Collaborate with Security on guardrails and secure defaults while ensuring CloudOps remains an enablement-focused team, not a gatekeeper.
• Promote platform thinking and cultural change - helping the team build confidence, question assumptions, and engage proactively with partners across engineering.
• Manage vendor relationships, infrastructure costs, and resourcing for the platform surface areas you own.

What You'll Bring

• 8+ years of engineering experience, including 3+ years leading platform, cloud infrastructure, SRE, or DevOps teams.
• Strong experience with AWS (compute, networking, IAM, storage, databases) and Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, CDK).
• Experience designing and operating CI/CD pipelines and secure deployment workflows (GitHub Actions, OIDC, artifact management).
• Familiarity with modern observability practices (metrics, logs, traces; OpenTelemetry; CloudWatch, Datadog, or Grafana).
• Practical knowledge of containerized applications (Docker, ECS/EKS) and developer workflows on Mac/Linux.
• Hands-on understanding of balancing security, reliability, and developer experience through guardrails and risk-based tradeoffs.
• Experience modernizing legacy systems or shepherding large technical transitions is a strong plus.
• A track record of building strong teams, mentoring engineers, and leading through ambiguity and change.
• Curiosity and excitement about how AI can enhance developer workflows, observability, and tooling - even if you're still learning.

$180,000 - $220,000 a year

Ellevation is transparent about its approach to pay which includes a competitive base salary, annual performance-based raise, and bonus (or commission for sales positions). The salary range for this role is $180,000 to $220,000 commensurate with candidate experience and internal parity. Our philosophy is that the full range is indicative of growth during employment. In addition, we provide comprehensive benefits to all full-time employees.

Are you passionate about growth and eager to learn? Do you possess a drive to excel and make a difference? Ellevation values diversity, creativity, and a hunger for new perspectives. While our job postings outline preferred qualifications, we believe that talent comes in various forms. If you're motivated, adaptable, and ready to contribute, we encourage you to apply. We welcome candidates from all backgrounds and experiences, recognizing that unique skills and fresh outlooks are invaluable assets to our team. Don't let a checklist of requirements deter you - take the leap, and let's explore the possibilities together!

Benefits - Benefits eligible employees (and qualifying dependents) are covered by medical, dental, vision, and basic life insurance. Employees can enroll in our company's 401(k) retirement plan and receive an employer match up to 50% on the first 7% of your contribution, with pre-tax and Roth options. Employees have access to flexible paid time off for vacations, sick and disability policy, additional 10 paid company holidays, 2 floating holidays and a winter office closure between Christmas and New Year's. In addition, we provide a generous parental leave benefit, back-up childcare or eldercare, and a variety of other perks to support the health and well-being of our employees.