Senior Manager — Central Cloud Operations

Cloud Infrastructure, Engineering & Governance

EXPERIENCE

12–15 Years

FUNCTION

Central Cloud Operations

REPORTS TO

Head / Director, Cloud Engg.

TEAM SIZE

Multi-tower, managers

+ leads

About the role:

We are seeking a Senior Manager to lead the Central Cloud Operations function, owning the

architecture, governance, and day-to-day operational health of a large, multi-cloud estate spanning

Azure, AWS, and GCP. The ideal candidate brings deep, hands-on mastery of one primary cloud platform

along with working fluency across the other two, and is equally comfortable architecting large-scale

infrastructure as they are managing teams, stakeholders, and governance frameworks at an enterprise

scale. This is a leadership role for someone who is self-driven, decisive under ambiguity, and credible in

front of senior leadership

In this role, you will:

Key Responsibilities

Cloud Architecture & Engineering

•Own the design and architectural review of large-scale, highly available cloud infrastructure, applying

Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) and Well-Architected Framework (WAF) principles across reliability,

security, cost, and operational excellence pillars.

•Provide architectural direction on landing zones, network topology, identity design, and workload

placement decisions across the primary CSP and secondary platforms.

•Act as the escalation point and final technical authority for complex, cross-cloud design decisions

within the operations function.

Migration & Large-Scale Delivery

•Lead large-scale cloud migration and modernization programs — discovery, wave planning,

execution, and cutover — minimizing business disruption and tracking against defined RTO/RPO and

performance benchmarks.

•Evaluate and select the right migration pattern (rehost, replatform, refactor) per workload, balancing

cost, risk, and timeline.

•Manage solution providers, system integrators, and OEM/CSP partners to ensure delivery

commitments are met against agreed SLAs.

Security, Risk & Governance

•Establish and maintain cloud security standards aligned to industry frameworks (CIS Benchmarks,

NIST, ISO 27001) and Zero Trust principles across identity, network, and data layers.

•Own governance frameworks — RACI structures, policy-as-code guardrails, access reviews, and

remediation SLAs — across a large multi-account/subscription/project estate.

•Partner with Security, Risk, and Compliance teams to drive closure of CSPM findings and audit

observations, and to keep the organization's cloud security posture continuously improving, not just

compliant at a point in time.

Operations & Cost Governance





•Own operational health of the cloud estate — availability, incident management, capacity planning,

and continuous improvement of run-books and automation.

•Drive FinOps discipline: cost visibility, chargeback/showback, rightsizing, and commitment-based

discount strategy across the estate.

•Champion Infrastructure-as-Code, DevOps practices, and CI/CD maturity across the operations

organization to reduce manual change and configuration drift.

Leadership & Stakeholder Management

•Build, mentor, and manage a multi-layered team of managers, architects, and engineers, setting explicit

goals and growing technical and leadership capability within the team.

•Represent Cloud Operations in front of senior leadership and client/business stakeholders,

translating technical risk and roadmap into business-relevant narratives.

Drive cross-functional alignment with Enterprise Architecture, Security, Corporate IT, and business unit

stakeholders on priorities, roadmaps, and governance decisions.

What you must have to be considered

•12–15 years of progressive experience in cloud infrastructure, operations, or architecture roles, with

at least 4–5 years in a people/delivery management capacity.

•Deep, hands-on expertise in one primary hyperscaler (Azure, AWS, or GCP), with demonstrable

working knowledge of the other two — able to converse credibly and make decisions across all

three.

•Strong grounding in CAF and WAF (or the AWS/GCP equivalents) and demonstrated application of

these frameworks in real architecture decisions, not just familiarity with the terminology.

•Proven track record designing and architecting large-scale, resilient infrastructure, and leading large

migration/modernization programs (500+ workloads or equivalent scale).

•Solid understanding of cloud security standards, IAM/governance models, and policy-as-

code/guardrail-driven operations in a large, multi-account cloud estate.

•Experience managing solution providers, system integrators, or outsourced delivery partners against

SLAs and commercial commitments.

•Demonstrated people management experience — managing managers or senior leads, not just

individual contributors — with a track record of team growth and retention.

•Executive-level communication skills,



with experience presenting technical risk, roadmaps, and

business cases to senior leadership or client stakeholders.

•Self-driven and comfortable operating with a high degree of autonomy and ambiguity, in a large,

complex, matrixed organization.

Preferred Certifications

•Architect/Professional-level certification in the primary CSP — e.g., Azure Solutions Architect Expert,

AWS Solutions Architect Professional, or Google Professional Cloud Architect.

•Associate or Practitioner-level certification in at least one of the secondary cloud platforms,

demonstrating cross-cloud fluency beyond the primary stack.

•A security credential such as CISSP, CCSP, or equivalent, supporting the governance and risk-

ownership aspects of the role.

•ITIL Foundation or equivalent service-management certification, relevant to running operations at

scale.

Preferred Tools & Technologies

•Infrastructure-as-Code & Automation: Terraform, Bicep/ARM Templates, AWS CloudFormation,

Ansible.

•CI/CD & Source Control: Git, Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Cloud Build.

•Containers & Orchestration: Docker, Kubernetes (AKS/EKS/GKE).

•Cloud Security Posture & Governance: Prisma Cloud, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, AWS Security

Hub, Security Command Center.

•Monitoring & Observability: Azure Monitor, Amazon CloudWatch, Google Cloud Monitoring,

Datadog, Splunk.

•Cost Management / FinOps: Azure Cost Management, AWS Cost Explorer, GCP Billing, CloudHealth or

Apptio Cloudability.

•ITSM & Collaboration: ServiceNow, Jira, and familiarity with GRC/audit tooling is an advantage,

particularly for candidates from regulated-industry backgrounds.

Work model:

We believe hybrid work is the way forward as we strive to provide flexibility wherever possible.

Based on this role’s business requirements, this is a hybrid position requiring 2-3 days a week in a client

or Cognizant office in Pune/Hyderabad/Kolkata/Bangalore/Coimbatore. Regardless of your working

arrangement, we are here to support a healthy work-life balance though our various wellbeing

programs.

The working arrangements for this role are accurate as of the date of posting. This may change based

on the project you’re engaged in, as well as business and client requirements. Rest assured; we will

always be clear about role expectations.

We're excited to meet people who share our mission and can make an impact in a variety of ways.

Don't hesitate to apply, even if you only meet the minimum requirements listed. Think about your

transferable experiences and unique skills that make you stand out as someone who can bring new and

exciting things to this role.

📌 Central Cloud Operations - SM Level (Pune)
🏢 People First Consultants
📍 Pune