Head of IT

Job Description

Job Description

Description

About Centerbase

At Centerbase, we empower mid-size law firms to run their practices more efficiently, profitably, and client-centrically. Our cloud-based legal practice management platform streamlines the entire client lifecycle from intake to billing to business intelligence, helping attorneys deliver exceptional service while achieving their growth goals.

We’re more than just a software provider—we’re a partner in transformation. With a focus on automation, flexibility, and continuous innovation, we give firms the tools to modernize operations, improve collaboration, and adapt to the evolving expectations of today’s clients and legal professionals. At Centerbase, we come to work every day committed to making legal work easier, smarter, and more impactful for the firms and communities we serve.

Everything we do is guided by four core values:

• Customer Centric
• Stronger Together
• Be the Difference
• Relentless Improvement

These values shape who we are: a dedicated, inventive, and passionate team committed to empowering law firms to achieve lasting growth and success.

Summary

 
Centerbase is seeking a hands-on Director, Cloud & IT Operations to lead the operational backbone of our cloud-driven business through an active migration and beyond. Reporting to the CTO, you'll own the day-to-day across our cloud environment — as we consolidate onto AWS from a mix of Azure and colocation — plus our internal IT and corporate systems and the execution of our security and compliance programs, keeping Centerbase secure, reliable, scalable, and cost-efficient as we grow.

This is a hands-on, player-coach role. You'll land the cloud migration and stand up modern operations — DevOps, observability, incident response, and cost discipline — while leading a lean team of employees and specialized service partners. You'll bring an AI-forward mindset to force-multiply a small team, and you'll know when to build in-house versus leverage providers.
Key Responsibilities

• Land the in-flight consolidation onto AWS (from Azure and colocation), then run best-practice cloud operations: CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, and release/change management.
• Build observability and performance monitoring — metrics, logging, tracing, and SLOs/SLIs — and drive down alert noise and mean-time-to-resolution.
• Own the production incident and issue-resolution process: severity levels, on-call, runbooks, and blameless postmortems.
• Ensure reliability and resilience — high availability, backup, disaster recovery (RPO/RTO), and regular DR testing.
• Partner with Engineering and DevOps on operational readiness and the platform-vs-product infrastructure boundary.
• Bring an AI-forward approach to operations — use automation and AI to force-multiply a lean team across monitoring, runbooks, incident response, and cost analysis.

• Own a growing cloud spend: cost visibility and tagging, rightsizing, commitments (Savings Plans / Reserved Instances), budgets, and anomaly detection — keeping the migration cost-disciplined.
• Drive continuous cost optimization and cost accountability across teams.
• Rationalize the SaaS and tooling portfolio (including AI tools) — consolidate overlapping tools and renegotiate vendors.

• Own the internal IT ecosystem — networks, endpoints, productivity tools, and identity management.
• Run onboarding/offboarding, role-based access controls, and device lifecycle management.
• Manage third-party SaaS systems and integrations; drive automation and a strong employee-IT experience.
• Oversee help desk operations with a customer-centric service culture and clear SLAs.

• Execute and mature the compliance program — SOC 2 today, with HIPAA being added to this year's audit, alongside NIST and GDPR/California privacy — in partnership with the CTO and our security partners.
• Run access reviews, vulnerability and patch management, configuration management, and secure cloud/infrastructure practices.
• Support audits and evidence collection, risk assessments, third-party/vendor risk, and policy enforcement.

• Lead, mentor, and grow a lean team of in-house engineers and specialists (e.g., DBA, DevOps/cloud architect, systems engineer).
• Orchestrate providers — offshore/nearshore contractors, security-services vendors (MDR/pentest), and an MSP where it pays off (a vCISO if engaged) — with clear SLAs and accountability, and make deliberate build-vs-buy decisions.
• Own IT and cloud budgets, vendor relationships, procurement, licensing, and contract negotiations.

Requirements

• 8+ years in cloud/infrastructure operations, DevOps/SRE, or systems engineering, including 3+ years leading technical teams and/or service partners.
• Hands-on depth operating a production, customer-facing cloud environment for a SaaS or cloud-native product (AWS preferred): compute, networking, storage, and security. Running internal corporate IT — even at a SaaS company — is not a substitute.
• A demonstrated track record leading a cloud migration and/or standing up a cloud-ops / SRE / DevOps function , with measurable cost and reliability outcomes.
• Deep, hands-on ownership of infrastructure-as-code (Terraform / CloudFormation / CDK) and CI/CD for the operational/platform layer — you author and own it, not just deploy what others set up.
• Practical depth in observability and SLO-based reliability (e.g., Grafana), production incident management and on-call, cloud cost management / FinOps, and backup, disaster recovery, and resilience.
• Evidence of an AI-forward approach — using automation and AI to increase the leverage of a lean team.
• Experience managing internal IT in a growing technology or SaaS organization — identity, endpoints, SaaS, and help desk.
• Working knowledge of security frameworks and compliance — SOC 2 required; HIPAA, NIST, and privacy (GDPR/CCPA) a strong plus.
• Experience managing external providers (MSP, MSSP, or contractors; vCISO a plus) and owning vendor budgets.
• Exceptional communication, leadership, and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Nice to Have

• Experience in the legal, financial, or other regulated / data-sensitive verticals.
• Familiarity with data-platform operations (data warehouse, CDC/ELT pipelines, analytics).
• Experience consolidating a multi-cloud / hybrid estate (AWS + Azure + colocation) onto a primary cloud.
• Relevant certifications: AWS (Solutions Architect / SysOps / DevOps Engineer), plus SRE/DevOps, security (CISSP), or ITIL.

Benefits

• Flexible PTO
• 2 Company-Wide Mental Health Days
• Parental Leave Programs
• 401(k) with Company Match
• Broad Equity Participation