Director, Technical Operations - Infrastructure

Director, Technical Operations - Infrastructure Who We Are Accommodations Plus International (API) is a technology and services company focused on driving innovation across the travel and transportation industry. We partner with organizations in the airline, cruise, and rail sectors to deliver solutions that improve layover operations, enhance customer experience, and support long-term growth. Our mission is to make layovers simpler and more efficient for crew members—and we bring that to life through deep industry expertise and a practical, results-driven approach. Today, API’s platform powers over 18 million crew room nights each year for 100+ airlines and travel operators worldwide. Our Global Reach ensures that airline crews are rested, transported, and connected so global aviation runs on time. At API, we’re building a culture rooted in succeeding and thriving together. It’s a place where people are encouraged to take ownership, develop their skills, and contribute to work that matters. If you’re looking to grow your career in a company that values steady progress, real impact, and long-term development, we’d like to meet you! Overview The Director of Technical Ops - Infrastructure is a senior technology leader responsible for the reliability, scalability, performance, and security of API's cloud-based platform and underlying infrastructure. Operating across our New York and Pune, India offices, this leader will manage and develop geographically distributed engineering and operations teams, driving a culture of operational excellence, continuous improvement, and high availability. The Director will own governance and operational management of our AWS cloud environment, oversee system reliability and service continuity, and serve as the primary bridge between technology operations and the broader business. This role requires a seasoned technology executive who combines deep cloud expertise with strong people leadership, financial acumen, and the ability to partner with executive stakeholders to align infrastructure strategy with organizational goals. Essential Functions: Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Leadership & Team Management Lead, mentor, and develop distributed technical operations teams across New York and Pune, India, fostering a collaborative, high-performance culture that bridges time zones and cultural contexts Define team structure, roles, and career development frameworks for engineers and site reliability engineers (SREs) across both locations Establish clear goals, KPIs, and performance expectations for the technical operations organization; conduct regular performance reviews and provide ongoing coaching and feedback Partner with HR and talent acquisition to recruit and retain top-tier technical talent in both New York and Pune; build a deep bench of operational expertise across the organization Facilitate cross-functional collaboration between the technical operations team and product engineering, security, data, and business teams to ensure operational requirements are integrated into the software development lifecycle Own the governance and operational management of API's AWS cloud environment, including multi-account strategy, security controls, compliance posture, and cost management Drive cloud cost optimization efforts including Reserved Instance and Savings Plans management, rightsizing, resource tagging governance, and FinOps practices to maximize infrastructure ROI Establish and enforce AWS security best practices including IAM least-privilege access, SCPs, GuardDuty, Security Hub, AWS Config, and CloudTrail audit logging across all environments Oversee multi-region and multi-availability-zone operational strategies to support disaster recovery objectives, minimize RTO/RPO, and maintain continuous service availability for global customers Evaluate new AWS services and infrastructure technologies; assess organizational fit and present adoption recommendations to senior leadership System Reliability & Service Continuity Define and own SLAs and uptime commitments for all production systems; establish reliability targets in partnership with product engineering leadership and communicate performance against those targets to executive stakeholders Oversee the monitoring and observability ecosystem using tools such as CloudWatch, Datadog, Grafana, or equivalent platforms to ensure proactive detection and rapid response to operational issues Drive capacity planning efforts, ensuring infrastructure scales efficiently to support business growth without compromising performance or cost targets Own the IT disaster recovery and business continuity plan for infrastructure systems; lead periodic tabletop exercises and failover testing to validate recovery capabilities Strategy, Governance & Stakeholder Engagement Develop and execute the multi-year technical operations roadmap in alignment with the company's product strategy, growth objectives, and technology vision Provide regular operational reporting to senior leadership team, including infrastructure health dashboards, cost reports, and strategic initiative progress updates Lead technology vendor relationships for cloud, infrastructure tooling, and managed services; oversee contract negotiations, SLA management, and vendor performance reviews Ensure compliance with relevant regulatory and data privacy requirements (SOC 2, GDPR, PCI-DSS, ISO 27001) as they apply to infrastructure and operations; partner with the security team on audit readiness Own the IT disaster recovery and business continuity plan for infrastructure systems; lead periodic tabletop exercises and failover testing to validate recovery capabilities Manage the technical operations budget, including headcount, tooling, and cloud spend; provide accurate forecasting and variance analysis to finance and leadership stakeholders Proven leadership ability with experience building, scaling, and retaining high-performing technical teams across multiple geographies and time zones Executive presence and strong communication skills; able to translate complex infrastructure and operational concepts into clear, actionable narratives for C-suite and board-level audiences Strategic mindset balanced with operational discipline — equally effective setting a multi-year infrastructure vision and ensuring day-to-day operational excellence across distributed teams Deep technical credibility with AWS cloud services, cloud-native application patterns, networking, and security; respected by engineering teams for substantive technical knowledge Strong financial acumen with experience managing multi-million-dollar cloud and infrastructure budgets and driving cost optimization without compromising reliability Culturally aware and skilled at leading geographically distributed teams; experienced navigating the logistical and interpersonal dynamics of cross-timezone collaboration between US and India-based teams Data-driven decision maker who leverages metrics, SLOs, and operational KPIs to prioritize investments and communicate operational health to stakeholders Commitment to engineering excellence, blameless culture, and continuous learning across the entire technical operations organization Position Type and Expected Hours of Work This is a full-time, exempt position based in New York, NY. Standard hours are Monday through Friday during core business hours. Given the global nature of this role, flexibility in scheduling is expected to accommodate regular collaboration with the Pune, India team across significant time zone differences. Occasional evening availability for major deployments and scheduled maintenance windows may be required. Travel This position may require occasional domestic travel to support vendor meetings, industry conferences, cross-functional leadership engagements, and business unit initiatives. Required Education and Experience Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field; Master's degree or MBA preferred; equivalent experience will be considered 15+ years of progressive experience in technology operations, infrastructure engineering, or cloud operations, with at least 5 years in a senior director-level or equivalent leadership role managing technical teams Demonstrated experience managing geographically distributed teams across multiple countries, with specific experience overseeing engineering or operations staff in India strongly preferred Strong working knowledge of AWS cloud services including compute (EC2, ECS, EKS, Lambda), storage (S3, EFS, EBS), networking (VPC, Transit Gateway, Route 53, CloudFront), databases (RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache), and security services (IAM, GuardDuty, Security Hub, WAF, Shield) Proven track record overseeing highly available, multi-region production systems with aggressive uptime and performance SLAs in a cloud-native environment Demonstrated experience managing cloud infrastructure budgets, implementing FinOps practices, and presenting financial performance and forecasts to executive leadership Experience with security and compliance frameworks relevant to cloud environments, including SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, or PCI-DSS Experience owning and operating observability and monitoring platforms (Datadog, CloudWatch, Grafana, or equivalent) and driving a metrics-driven approach to operational health Experience owning disaster recovery and business continuity programs for cloud-based infrastructure, including regular testing and executive-level reporting AWS Certified Solutions Architect or equivalent AWS professional-level certification preferred Preferred Qualifications Experience leading technical operations at a SaaS or cloud-native technology company supporting enterprise customers with high availability and data security requirements Experience with database reliability engineering including RDS/Aurora operational management, performance tuning, failover testing, and backup/recovery validation Knowledge of networking protocols and enterprise network architecture including BGP, SD-WAN, MPLS, VPN, and zero-trust network access (ZTNA) frameworks Familiarity with service management concepts and change management processes; experience with tooling such as ServiceNow or Jira Service Management is a plus Experience working in travel technology, hospitality, or other high-volume, customer-facing SaaS environments Exposure to ML/AI infrastructure considerations including data pipeline reliability and model serving infrastructure on AWS Success Metrics Stability, uptime, and performance of all cloud infrastructure and production systems, measured against defined SLAs and reliability targets. Successful execution of cloud cost optimization initiatives, delivering measurable reductions in AWS spend through FinOps practices and rightsizing. Reduced risk profile through strong security posture, compliance readiness, and governance frameworks across all AWS environments. High-performing, engaged distributed technical teams across New York and Pune, with clear career frameworks and low voluntary attrition. Validated disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities through regular tabletop exercises and failover testing. Infrastructure roadmap milestones delivered on schedule and in alignment with product engineering and company growth objectives. Compensation: 160,000 180,000 CAD, commensurate with experience. Other Duties Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time according to business needs. The performance of additional responsibilities if you are designated as a Data Protection Champion (DPC), Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO) or Information Assurance Accounting Officer (IAAO). This position operates in a professional office environment. This role routinely uses standard office equipment such as computers, phones, photocopiers, filing cabinets and fax machines. Physical Demands The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. While performing the duties of this job, the employee is regularly required to talk or hear. The employee frequently is required to stand, walk; use hands to finger, handle or feel; and reach with hands and arms. AAP/EEO Statement Accommodations Plus International is an Equal Opportunity Employer that does not discriminate on the basis of actual or perceived race, creed, color, religion, alienage or national origin, ancestry, citizenship status, age, disability or handicap, sex, marital status, veteran status, sexual orientation, genetic information, arrest record, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state or local laws. Our management team is dedicated to this policy with respect to recruitment, hiring, placement, promotion, transfer, training, compensation, benefits, employee activities and general treatment during employment. #J-18808-Ljbffr Accommodations Plus International