Platform Operations Director

Description The Director of Platform Operations is the single accountable owner for Clear Course's entire technology operations estate — from end-user devices across 40+ portfolio companies through to cloud production environments. Reporting to the CTTO, the role owns infrastructure, internal IT, SRE, security operations implementation, and vendor cost management.

The role operates at the intersection of operational excellence and commercial discipline — owning cloud Fin Ops outcomes, leading DR and BCP processes, and providing the senior escalation point for incidents and infrastructure risk across the group.

Key Accountabilities:

Infrastructure & Cloud End-to-end accountability for the technology estate: cloud (Azure), colocation, commodity hosting, internal IT, and end-user environments across all portfolio companies.

Owns cloud and hosting strategy in conjunction with Head of Infrastructure — central management of Azure cost optimisation, reserved instances, and Fin Ops discipline.

Security Operations Owns security operations implementation end-to-end; liaises with Dev Sec Ops  and the CISO who provides governance counterbalance.

Manages joiner/leaver management and identity/access management across the estate, informed by the CISO on policy.

Resilience & Continuity Accountable for DR planning, backup testing, and BCP across the portfolio.

Senior escalation point for incidents, infrastructure risk, and business continuity across the group.

Internal IT & Systems Manages internal IT and business systems administration (M365, Net Suite, Success Factors, SharePoint) —infrastructure, integrations, and IAM.Ensures observability and SRE capability is fit for purpose across cloud, hosted, and end-user environments.

Vendor & Cost Management Drives cloud and vendor cost discipline — manages the Vendor & Fin Ops Lead; accountable for Fin Ops outcomes.

Primary interface to the CTTO on governance and to Platform Engineering on Dev Sec Ops  integration.

Key Relationships:

CTTO — Direct line manager. Governance, infrastructure risk, and Fin Ops accountability. CISO (Head of Security) — Close working relationship. Security operations implementation, IAM policy, and incident escalation. Director of Platform Engineering — Coordinates on Dev Sec Ops  integration and CI/CD infrastructure requirements.
• Head of Infrastructure & Cloud — Direct report. Hosting strategy, cloud platform, and Fin Ops execution. Head of SRE — Direct report. Observability, on-call, and DR/BCP processes.
• Head of Internal Services — Direct report. Internal IT, business systems, and end-user support. Finance — Direct report. Cloud cost visibility, savings plans, and vendor negotiations.

Requirements Essential Infrastructure  and cloud operations leadership at portfolio or group scale — Azure at production scale with IaC (Terraform or equivalent) governance experience

Track record managing internal IT operations across a distributed estate — multiple sites or subsidiaries

Commercial awareness: has owned cloud cost management and Fin Ops outcomes with measurable results

Incident management and on-call leadership — has run major incident response at group level

Strong vendor management: MSP relationships, colocation contracts, cloud provider negotiations

Desirable PE-backed multi-entity experience — integrating new acquisitions into a group infrastructure estate

Experience standing up SRE practices from scratch in a distributed environmentM
365 and Microsoft tooling estate management at scale

Benefits

Competitive base salary with uncapped commission
25 days holiday plus bank holidays

Hybrid and flexible working options

Private medical cover

Health cash plan

Life assurance

Access to the Calm wellbeing app Perkbox employee benefits platform

Enhanced parental leave

Cycle to work scheme

Volunteering days Employee Assistance Programme Ongoing learning, development, and career progression across the Clear Course Group

Job Summary ID: 7

Department:
Clear Course Group Type: full time