IT Systems Cloud Leader

IT Systems Cloud Leader

At United Launch Alliance, the Cloud Leader oversees strategy, operations, reliability, and modernization for ULA's cloud platforms, ensuring secure, scalable, and mission-aligned services across engineering, launch operations, enterprise systems, and automation teams. This role blends Scrum leadership, architectural depth, and people leadership, supporting teams that work across Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, automation, and hybrid systems.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead, coach, and develop cloud engineers, Cloud Ops team members, SREs, and architects in a hybrid environment
• Govern and maintain Kubernetes clusters supporting mission-critical engineering workloads and CICD environments
• Own cloud platform architecture, service mesh/networking (Ingress, CNI, load balancers), node topology, autoscaling, and resilience patterns
• Drive cloud modernization initiatives: automation, infrastructure as code, platform hardening, observability, and operational simplification
• Facilitate Agile/Scrum routines for Cloud Ops (planning, reviews, retrospectives, Scrum of Scrums), ensuring transparency, inspection, and adaptation
• Partner with Product Owners, System Architects, engineering teams, and program leadership to align cloud capabilities with mission requirements
• Lead incident response and reliability engineering for cloud workloads, including cluster upgrades, node failures, migrations, and production escalations
• Oversee cloud security posture: RBAC, OPA/Gatekeeper, pod security standards, identity, secrets, and compliance controls
• Manage operational processes monitoring, patching, lifecycle management, change control, documentation, and service metrics
• Support hiring, workforce planning, coaching, performance management, and people development across the Cloud Ops team

Required

Education:

Bachelor

Required Years of

Experience:

Minimum of 8 years of related work experience

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) field from an accredited college or university
• 8+ years of progressive experience in cloud platforms, systems infrastructure, or Dev Ops/SRE roles
• 3+ years of people leadership experience managing technical staff (engineers, architects, or Cloud Ops teams)
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes operations (topology, autoscaling, RBAC, mesh/ingress, persistent volumes, upgrade cycles)
• Experience supporting hybrid environments (on-prem + cloud) and mission-critical workloads
• Strong knowledge of cloud infrastructure in AWS or Azure, including networking, storage, identity, and computing
• Practical experience with automation and scripting (Power Shell, Python, Bash, Terraform, Ansible)
• Experience leading Agile/Scrum teams or ceremonies (standups, retros, planning, demos)
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills, able to work across architecture, engineering, security, and program leadership

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience managing architect-level resources and guiding large-scale cloud platform decisions
• Expertise in Kubernetes ecosystem tooling:
  Prometheus, Grafana, distributed tracing, service mesh, OPA/Gatekeeper
• Experience leading cloud modernization or cloud migration efforts at enterprise scale
• Experience supporting mission-critical, regulated, or security-sensitive environments
• Familiarity with Scrum at Scale, Scrum of Scrums, PI planning, and Agile leadership competencies
• Certifications:
  
  AWS/Azure Architect, Kubernetes (CKA/CKAD), Terraform, ITIL/ITSM
• Strong coaching instincts—able to raise performance of both senior and junior engineers
• Experience driving operational reporting, capacity planning, and cloud lifecycle strategy

Salary Range (for ULA - Denver only): $ - $

What makes ULA different? Because we understand launch success comes through the collective efforts of a team, we seek the best to join us. We value ethics, ingenuity, engagement and professional development for employees at all levels. We offer our employees competitive pay and benefits including: 401(k) match plus an additional employer contribution, discretionary annual incentive bonus for eligible employees, generous paid time off, flexible work environments.

Additionally, most salaried ULA team members work a "9/80 schedule," meaning they enjoy every other Friday off. Benefits and work schedules may vary for union-represented hourly positions and are described in the applicable collective bargaining agreement.