Knox Systems is looking for a Director of DevOps to define and execute our enterprise DevOps, cloud platform, and automation strategy. This role provides technical and organizational leadership across Platform Engineering, CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), observability, reliability, and compliance automation for our regulated cloud environments. You will ensure our platforms are secure, scalable, auditable, and cost-efficient, enabling engineering teams to deliver software rapidly while meeting FedRAMP and NIST 800-53 requirements.
What You'll Do
- Define and own Knox’s DevOps and Platform Engineering strategy, roadmap, and operating model.
- Build, lead, and scale a multi-disciplinary organization of DevOps Managers, Platform Engineers, and SREs.
- Establish clear ownership models, career paths, performance standards, and succession planning.
- Champion a DevSecOps culture focused on automation, reliability, accountability, and continuous improvement.
- Serve as the executive escalation point for platform reliability, deployment risk, and operational maturity.
- Set architectural direction for multi-cloud infrastructure (AWS, Azure, GCP) using Infrastructure as Code.
- Define enterprise standards for networking, IAM, encryption, key management, configuration baselines, environment consistency, Policy-as-Code and GitOps workflows.
- Ensure platform designs and automation meet FedRAMP Moderate/High requirements and NIST 800-53 controls.
- Evaluate and approve new platform tooling and cloud services.
- Own the enterprise CI/CD strategy supporting multiple product and engineering teams.
- Standardize pipelines with reusable frameworks, integrated security scanning, and compliance validation.
- Enable self-service deployment models that balance velocity with governance.
- Define and track DORA metrics, deployment success rates, and release reliability KPIs.
- Partner with Engineering leadership to continuously improve developer productivity and release cadence.
- Establish organization-wide standards for observability, SRE practices, and reliability engineering.
- Ensure systems are instrumented with metrics, logs, and traces aligned to defined SLIs and SLOs.
- Partner with NOC and Security teams to improve detection, alerting, and incident response.
- Lead post-incident reviews and drive systemic improvements through automation and design changes.
- Partner with Security and Compliance leadership to embed compliance-as-code across platforms and pipelines.
- Own DevOps and platform responsibilities for Continuous Monitoring (ConMon), evidence automation and audit readiness, secure secrets, identity, and access management.
- Ensure platform documentation, runbooks, and policies meet FedRAMP and 3PAO expectations.
- Act as a technical leader during audits and compliance reviews.
- Establish FinOps practices across cloud environments, integrating cost controls into automation.
- Ensure consistent tagging, usage tracking, and cost attribution.
- Provide executive-level reporting on cloud spend, optimization opportunities, and ROI.
- Balance performance, reliability, and cost efficiency in platform decisions.
- Serve as the primary Platform/DevOps representative in architecture review boards, change management, release readiness and risk assessments.
- Communicate platform health, risks, and progress to senior leadership.
- Partner with Product, Engineering, Security, and Operations leaders to align priorities and execution.
What We're Looking For
- 10+ years in DevOps, Platform Engineering, or Cloud Infrastructure roles.
- 5+ years leading senior engineers and/or managers in complex environments.
- Proven experience operating multi-cloud platforms in regulated industries.
- Deep expertise in IaC, CI/CD, GitOps, and cloud-native architectures.
- Strong working knowledge of FedRAMP and NIST 800-53 control implementation.
- Exceptional leadership, communication, and executive presentation skills.
- U.S. citizenship (dual citizenship not permitted).
Nice to Have
- AWS DevOps Engineer – Professional, Azure Solutions Architect, Terraform Professional, CISSP, or ITIL v4 certification.
Technical Stack
- Cloud: AWS, Azure, GCP
- Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, Ansible, CloudFormation
- GitOps & CI/CD: ArgoCD, Flux, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, Azure DevOps, Spacelift
- Containers & Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE), Helm, Service Mesh (Istio, App Mesh)
- Observability: Grafana, Datadog, CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Prometheus
- Security: CrowdStrike, Vault, KMS, Azure Key Vault, Keeper
- Compliance Frameworks: FedRAMP, NIST 800-53, SOC 2, ISO 27001
Team & Environment
You will build and lead a multi-disciplinary organization of DevOps Managers, Platform Engineers, and SREs. This role reports to the VP of Engineering or CTO. Work is high-impact and purpose-driven at Knox. Problems are high-stakes, expectations are high, and results are visible. Speed, rigor, and trust matter. Your contributions will be visible, your expertise relied upon, and your impact immediate and measurable.
Benefits & Compensation
- Compensation: $190,000 – $225,000
- Medical, Dental, Vision, Life & Disability insurance.
- Unlimited PTO.
- Employee funded 401k plan.
Work Mode
This is a hybrid position based in Charlotte, NC or Woburn, MA.
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all.
