Senior Director of Cloud Services

The posting

About Coalfire

Coalfire is on a mission to make the world a safer place by solving our clients’ hardest cybersecurity challenges. We work at the cutting edge of technology to advise, assess, automate, and ultimately help companies navigate the ever-changing cybersecurity landscape. We are headquartered in Chicago, Illinois with offices across the U.S. and U.K., and we support clients around the world.

But that’s not who we are – that’s just what we do.

We are thought leaders, consultants, and cybersecurity experts, but above all else, we are a team of passionate problem-solvers who are hungry to learn, grow, and make a difference.

POSITION SUMMARY:

The Senior Director, Cloud Services leads the operations for our Cloud Services organization across professional and managed services teams. In this role, you will partner with the Vice President and Managing Principal to establish delivery standards, drive mechanisms for monitoring engagement health, and ensure cloud services are delivered on time, with consistent quality and a clear focus on client needs.

As the Senior Director, Cloud Services, you will provide technical and operational leadership across the full Cloud Services delivery lifecycle. You will serve as the main delivery point of contact with Delivery Operations, Resource Management, and other cross-functional teams to ensure success for Cloud Services. You will support consultants and delivery leaders, identify and remove delivery risks, and create the processes, metrics, and accountability needed to scale high-quality cloud services. You will also serve as a trusted technical partner to Sales, Advisory, Security, and other cross-functional teams.

This role requires a deep understanding of engineering operations, customer advocacy, and strategic business alignment to help organizations optimize their security posture. The Senior Director will collaborate with clients, executive leadership, and technical teams to develop security engineering strategies, improve customer adoption, and enhance product-market alignment. Additionally, this role includes public speaking, cybersecurity evangelism, and leading go-to-market (GTM) initiatives to strengthen brand presence and community engagement.

What You'll Do

• Establish, monitor, and reinforce Cloud Services delivery standards for scope, quality, timelines, documentation, risk management, and client communication.
• Maintain visibility into engagement schedules, milestones, risks, dependencies, and resourcing to ensure cloud services delivery is progressing on time.
• Review delivery health and operational metrics such as utilization, capacity, forecast, margins, quality, and client satisfaction; drive corrective action when needed.
• Lead resolution of high-priority delivery and client escalations, engaging directly with clients and delivery teams to restore momentum and protect outcomes.
• Lead high-priority client escalations and difficult conversations with professionalism, transparency, and a focus on practical resolution and long-term relationship health.
• Ensure client commitments are understood across delivery teams and that engagement decisions, tradeoffs, status, and next steps are communicated clearly and consistently.
• Oversee and ensure mechanisms exist and are running for evaluating engineering quality, risk management, technical readiness, design quality, implementation quality, and corrective actions for recurring delivery issues, using the standards approved by Cloud Services leadership.
• Oversee and ensure mechanisms exist for the team in defining engineering standards for architecture, engineering, and operational readiness. You will own goverance and oversight of the delivery teams implementation and adoption of those approved standards across the teams, in collaboration with your direct reports and other delivery operational teams.
• Oversee, establish or update, operational mechanisms with delivery operations and resource management teams on backlog management, prioritization, dependency, work-in-progress, and recovery practices across our project. Provide standards, oversight, and collaboration amongst the teams to high-light concerns, address risks and mitigations, and recommended next steps.
• Support the Vice President and Managing Principal in planning and executing the Cloud Services operating model, priorities, and growth initiatives.
• Support offering mgmt and other delivery operations teams on standardization, service description, pricing, scoping, etc to ensure repeatable and high value services are provided to our clients.
• Evaluate emerging cloud technologies and service delivery practices, translating relevant developments into practical guidance, enablement, and standards.
• Provide technical and operational input into business planning, service development, forecasting, and investment decisions.
• Drive business growth for our customers and understanding their business and GTM needs, and how Coalfire can support their initiatives
• Identify scope, staffing, schedule, and delivery risks early; establish mitigation plans and ensure that proposed commitments are aligned to available capabilities and client outcomes.
• Marketing support and enablement – clearly articular our GTM and value proposition to internal and extneral stakeholders
• Partner with Sales and pre-sales teams to lead discovery, understand client business and technical challenges, assess delivery feasibility, and shape compelling cloud services approaches
• Support sales lifecycles when delivery input is required by working with Sales and customers to validate technical content in SOWs (e.g., Approach and Methodogy, timelines, outputs, deliverables, pricing, resourcing, etc), Change Orders, and Contracts and create accurate delivery inputs for deals.
• Confirm the accuracy of technical information in SOWs, Change Orders, and Contracts and coordinate corrections with the authorized Sales owners.
• You maintain decision-making authority on practice pricing, contract gross margins, and discounting up to the allowable based on your role.
• Govern the rollout and ongoing management of scalable operating processes, playbooks, and governance that improve consistency, predictability, and quality across Cloud Services engagements.
• Lead and support cloud services delivery leaders and consultants, providing direction, coaching, and accountability to ensure consistent execution and strong client outcomes.
• Provide technical leadership across Cloud Services, promoting shared standards, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement in delivery practices.
• Partner with the Vice President and Managing Principal to assess team performance, staffing, onboarding, training, and professional development needs.
• Serve as the operational and technical escalation point for delivery teams, removing blockers and supporting consultants in meeting client commitments and client needs.
• Push through technical and organizational roadblocks by clarifying decisions, aligning the right experts, escalating appropriately, and maintaining accountability through resolution
• Ensure governance standards are defined and tracked for technical and delivery leadership across cloud services engagements, promoting practical standards, reusable approaches, strong documentation, and continuous improvement.
• Oversee mechanisms for rollout and ongoing maintance of training, new-hire enablement, role-based onboarding, career and growth pathways, promotion readiness, performance expectations, and succession coverage for all members on the team.
• Provide oversight for established technical qualification, onboarding, work allocation, quality review, and performance expectations for subcontractors and delivery partners
• When applicable serve as the accountable Delivery leader for customer and internal escalations involving quality, delivery delays, architecture or implementation risk, performance, or unmet contractual commitments.
• Work with cross-functional teams (e.g., Delivery Ops, Resource mgmt., Delivery teams, etc) to define client management methodologies, escalation tracking, CSAT issue governance and tracking, QBR governance and tracking, and transition conversations; coordinate the right leader for action item, follow through, and recovery actions.
• Oversee and provide guidance to delivery leaders on accurate internal tracking of engineering commitments, effort, status, risks, dependencies, resource needs, and recovery actions across engagements.
• Join client, sales, QBR, workshop, transition, and escalation conversations when technical authority is required; assign the appropriate technical leader instead of becoming the default owner of every issue.
• Create repeatable systems that reduce dependency on individual experts and move lower-level delivery friction to the appropriate engineering leader.
• Provide executive-level briefings, helping leadership teams understand risk, issues, and mitigations.
• Establish key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure measure customer success, operational excellance, and delivery quality.
• Partner with Sales and pre-sales teams to assess delivery feasibility, shape estimates and approaches, and support high-level technical sales calls as needed.
• Work with cross-functional teams to coordinate integrated solutions, clarify delivery responsibilities, and ensure client commitments can be executed.
• Lead through influence across delivery teams, delivery operations, and other partners to coordinate integrated solutions and deliver on client commitments.
• Ensure mechanisms exist and are adhered to for quality management, coaching for teams on client engagement, scoping, communication, accountability, and delivery practices; provide feedback and escalation support that improve performance and strengthen the Cloud Services organization.
• Work with Delivery Operations, RDM, PMO, and Offering Management to implement their approved requirements, controls, and systems within Cloud Services.
• Provide oversight and governance for tracking engineering demand, skills, capacity, staffing, utilization, subcontractor, dependency, and delivery-readiness inputs to RDM, Delivery Operations, and PMO.
• Oversee delivery inputs to cross-functional teams (e.g., Offering Management, Sales, and the Cloud Services leadership) for service readiness, scope, staffing, effort, assumptions, dependencies, and pricing feasibility.

What You'll Bring

• 10+ years of experience in cloud services, technical delivery, professional services operations, or related leadership.
• Strong experience and proven success establishing delivery standards and improving operational performance across a cloud services portfolio.
• Proven success establishing delivery standards and improving operational performance across a cloud services portfolio.
• Direct experience leading cloud services delivery teams or organizations.
• Experience managing operational metrics such as utilization, margins, capacity, delivery timelines, quality, and client satisfaction.
• Strong operational leadership and team-building skills, with experience leading delivery teams, coaching technical leaders, and driving accountability.
• Deep understanding of cloud services delivery and engineering practices across AWS, Azure, and/or GCP.
• Proven ability to establish delivery standards, manage schedules and risks, and drive on-time, high-quality client outcomes.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to use operational metrics to identify trends and take corrective action.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to translate technical and delivery issues for consultants, clients, Sales, Advisory, Security, and executive leaders.
• Strategic Leadership & Advisory: Ability to develop, communicate, and execute Cloud engineering strategies for organizations.
• Proven leadership experience with cloud engineering, security engineering, consulting, or managed services delivery teams.
• Strong knowledge of engineering operations, oversight, and technical delivery governance.
• Strong client communication, technical judgment, prioritization, and people-leadership skills.
• Customer Success & Engagement: Proven expertise in driving customer satisfaction, security adoption, and retention.
• Go-To-Market Strategy & Product Success: Ability to align cybersecurity solutions with market demands and customer needs.
• Executive-Level Communication: Skilled in translating complex security concepts into actionable business insights.
• Strong operational leadership and team-building skills, with experience leading delivery teams, coaching technical leaders, and driving accountability.
• Deep understanding of cloud services delivery and engineering practices across AWS, Azure, and/or GCP.
• Proven ability to establish delivery standards, manage schedules and risks, and drive on-time, high-quality client outcomes.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with the ability to use operational metrics to identify trends and take corrective action.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to translate technical and delivery issues for consultants, clients, Sales, Advisory, Security, and executive leaders.
• Strategic Leadership & Advisory: Ability to develop, communicate, and execute Cloud engineering strategies for organizations.
• Proven leadership experience with cloud engineering, security engineering, consulting, or managed services delivery teams.
• Strong knowledge of engineering operations, oversight, and technical delivery governance.
• Strong client communication, technical judgment, prioritization, and people-leadership skills.
• Customer Success & Engagement: Proven expertise in driving customer satisfaction, security adoption, and retention.
• Go-To-Market Strategy & Product Success: Ability to align cybersecurity solutions with market demands and customer needs.
• Executive-Level Communication: Skilled in translating complex security concepts into actionable business insights.

Bonus Points

• Direct experience leading cloud services delivery teams or organizations.
• Background in customer-facing roles, with experience managing client escalations, delivery governance, or high-level technical discussions.
• Familiarity with ITIL, cloud governance, or other service management and architecture frameworks.
• Experience with Agile delivery practices, project management tools, professional services operations, or delivery governance.
• Strong interpersonal skills and the ability to influence cross-functional teams in remote and cloud-based environments.

Why You’ll Want to Join Us

At Coalfire, you’ll find the support you need to thrive personally and professionally. In many cases, we provide a flexible work model that empowers you to choose when and where you’ll work most effectively – whether you’re at home or an office.

Regardless of location, you’ll experience a company that prioritizes connection and wellbeing and be part of a team where people care about each other and our communities. You’ll have opportunities to join employee resource groups, participate in in-person and virtual events, and more. And you’ll enjoy competitive perks and benefits to support you and your family, like paid parental leave, flexible time off, certification and training reimbursement, digital mental health and wellbeing support membership, and comprehensive insurance options.

At Coalfire, equal opportunity and pay equity is integral to the way we do business. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or status as a protected veteran. Coalfire is committed to providing access, equal opportunity, and reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities in employment, its services, programs, and activities. To request reasonable accommodation to participate in the job application or interview process, contact our Human Resources team at [email protected].