Vice President of Infrastructure SaaS Operations at RapidDeploy

We are seeking an experienced and dynamic Vice President of Infrastructure/SaaS Operations to lead our Infrastructure, Uptime, Incident Command, DevOps, and Cybersecurity teams. The ideal candidate will be a strategic leader with a strong technical background and a proven track record of implementing and managing robust infrastructure, ensuring high uptime, handling incident responses effectively, and driving DevOps and Security practices to optimize and safeguard our production environments.

THIS ROLE IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO CANDIDATES LIVING IN SOUTH AFRICA AND HOLD SOUTH AFRICAN CITIZENSHIP

• Oversee the design, implementation, and maintenance of scalable and resilient infrastructure to support our applications and services.
• Develop strategies to optimize infrastructure costs while ensuring performance, reliability, and security.
• Stay abreast of emerging technologies and industry best practices to continuously improve our infrastructure.

• Set and enforce uptime targets, working closely with cross-functional teams to ensure that service level objectives (SLOs) and service level agreements (SLAs) are met.
• Implement monitoring and alerting systems to proactively identify and address potential issues before they impact users.
• Lead incident postmortems to identify root causes and implement preventive measures to enhance system reliability.
• Conduct risk assessments and business impact analyses. Develop and implement risk mitigation strategies to address identified risks and vulnerabilities.

• Establish and maintain incident response procedures and protocols, ensuring that the team is prepared to effectively manage incidents of varying severity.
• Lead incident response efforts during critical incidents, coordinating with technical teams to resolve issues promptly and minimize impact on users.
• Foster a culture of accountability and continuous improvement within the incident response process.

• Drive the adoption of DevOps and SRE principles across the engineering organization, promoting collaboration between development, operations, and quality assurance teams.
• Implement automation tools and processes to streamline deployment, testing, and monitoring workflows.
• Mentor and develop team members, fostering a culture of learning and innovation.

• Oversee the establishment and maintenance of a cybersecurity program that effectively protects information assets against unauthorized access, data breaches, and cyber threats.
• Ensure the implementation of security measures, including firewalls, anti-virus software, and intrusion detection systems.
• With the Direction of Infrastructure to implement oversee a comprehensive disaster recovery plan, that is aligned with our high availability targets, including internal process and training.
• Oversee a regular cadence of penetration testing exercises across all the company’s product lines, and ensure that identified vulnerabilities are logged, prioritized, and addressed within engineering teams.
• Attend and contribute to regular Information Security Committee meetings.

• Experience with governance and compliance regulations such as ISO27001, NIST.
• Work with the Director of Governance & Compliance too develop, implement, and maintain policies, procedures, and controls in accordance with ISO 27001 standards to ensure information security management system (ISMS) effectiveness.

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field.
• 7 years of experience in engineering leadership roles, with a focus on infrastructure, uptime management, incident response, DevOps, and SRE.
• Proven track record of designing and managing scalable infrastructure in cloud environments (e.g., Azure Commercial, Azure Gov, AWS, GCP).
• Strong understanding of networking, security, and system administration principles.
• Experience with incident management frameworks (e.g., ITIL, SRE) and incident response tools.
• Hands-on experience with DevOps tools and practices (e.g., CI/CD pipelines, configuration management, containerization).
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively across teams and influence decision-making at all levels of the organization.
• Demonstrated leadership ability, with a focus on coaching, mentoring, and developing high-performing teams.
• Extensive knowledge of cybersecurity frameworks, ISO 27001 standards, and regulatory compliance requirements.

• Experience in a fast-paced startup environment or high-growth technology company.
• Certifications in relevant areas such as Microsoft Azure Cloud Architect, Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA).

• Results oriented, excellent problem solving, strong analytical skills and self-managed
• High attention to detail
• Technically minded and be able to understand and communicate using technical jargons and terminologies with ease
•  Work well under pressure.
• Good communication skills (Written and verbal)

THIS ROLE IS ONLY AVAILABLE TO CANDIDATES LIVING IN SOUTH AFRICA AND HOLD SOUTH AFRICAN CITIZENSHIP

RapidDeploy is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.