Director Secure Cloud Hosting (AWSAzure)

As Director of Secure Cloud Hosting you will own strategy delivery and continuous improvement for client-facing managed cloud services across AWS and Azure. Youll lead a global team to mature services in reliability security/compliance and cost efficiency build trusted relationships with executives and application owners and drive the transformation to Infrastructure as Code (IaC) as the default operating model through standards reference patterns and coaching.

You are responsible for ensuring key outcomessystem reliability security integrity compliance readiness client satisfaction and cost optimizationachieved through effective governance of teams and vendors.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategy & Ownership

• Define and own the multiyear service roadmap (landing zones guardrails automation observability DR FinOps) and prioritize investments that advance reliability security and cost efficiency.

• Set SLO/SLA policy and institutionalize SRE practices (error budgets reliability guardrails automated remediation) through operating mechanisms and dashboards.

• Establish and approve reference architectures templates and IaC standards; ensure adoption across teams and vendors.

• Direct cloud governance (AWS Orgs/SCPs; Azure Mgmt Groups/Policy; tagging & cost allocation) and audit adherence.

• Define the strategy for AIdriven automation and observability (e.g. Bedrock Azure AI Foundry) and sequence usecases that deliver measurable impact.

Service Delivery & Operations

• Oversee onboarding of new client environments (landing zones identity networking policyascode baselines); approve readiness criteria and cutover.

• Be accountable for daytoday operations outcomes (patching backups/restore capacity performance monitoring/alerting) delivered by teams and vendors with clear KPIs and review cadences.

• Govern ITIL 4 processes (incident change/CAB problem request) with targets for MTTR change success rate and RCA quality.

• Ensure a 24/7 support model (runbooks/playbooks oncall rotations) is funded staffed tested and reviewed via postincident governance; mandate chaos engineering and DR test schedules with executive readouts.

• Champion integration of AI agents into operations; approve guardrails for automated remediation and anomaly detection.

Security & Compliance

• Ensure defensible controls aligned to NIST 80053 ISO 27001 SOC 2 and (where applicable) FedRAMP with continuous control monitoring and evidence management.

• Oversee vulnerability management detection/response log aggregation key/secret management and PAM; set risk thresholds and remediation SLAs.

• Direct continuous compliance via AWS Config Azure Policy CIS Benchmarks WellArchitected/CAF; review exceptions and drive closure.

• Partner with Security/Compliance leadership on audits findings and corrective action plans.

• Govern secure AI workload deployment and ensure adherence to emerging AI governance frameworks with NIST/ISO/FedRAMP alignment.

IaC Leadership

• Make IaC the default operating model and hold teams accountable for compliant automated delivery.

• Set direction and approve architectures for Terraform/Bicep/Pulumi/CloudFormation/CDK; ensure secure automation and traceability.

• Ensure CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions Azure DevOps AWS CodePipeline) implement policyascode scanning and segregation of duties.

• Establish standards reusable modules and best practices; sponsor enablement and coaching programs for teams.

• Champion AIassisted IaC validation and enforcement to accelerate secure deployments.

Observability

• Be accountable for endtoend observability (CloudWatch Azure Monitor Datadog/Prometheus/Grafana APM/trace SIEM) with tiered standards by criticality.

• Approve golden signals and SLO dashboards; require autoremediation where feasible and review trend reports.

• Direct AIdriven observability strategy for predictive alerting and noise reduction; track alert fatigue and burn rate.

FinOps & Commercial Management

• Own cost governance through budgets/forecasts rightsizing reservations/savings plans anomaly detection and showback/chargeback executed by FinOps and engineering.

• Establish and enforce tagging & cost allocation policy; publish executive reports and drive optimization guardrails that protect reliability and security.

• Track unit economics (costtoserve per workload/tenant) and improve over time through design standards and lifecycle management.

Stakeholder & Vendor Management

• Build trusted relationships with executives business leaders application owners and client stakeholders; run QBRs and roadmap reviews tied to outcomes.

• Manage cloud provider and vendor partnerships; escalate and influence roadmaps/support aligned to your strategy.

People Leadership

• Lead and develop a multidisciplinary organization (ops engineering admins PMO security ITSM); recruit coach set goals and successionplan.

• Foster a culture of accountability automationfirst and continuous improvement; recognize performance and address gaps.

Required Qualifications

• 10 years in cloud/platform engineering or operations; 5 years leading multidisciplinary teams in a 24x7 environment including direct leadership of Staff/Principal Architects.

Additional Qualifications

• Proven ability to drive IaC adoption and automation in regulated or security-sensitive organizations.

• Track record directing teams delivering with IaC (e.g. Terraform Bicep Pulumi CloudFormation AWS CDK) and policy-as-code; able to set standards review designs and enforce guardrails.

• Architectural depth across AWS and Azure (identity networking security compute storage data protection) with the ability to evaluate designs set guardrails and make tradeoffs.

• Demonstrated experience governing landing zones guardrails and policyascode in clientfacing accounts including readiness criteria and auditability.

• Strong command of ITIL 4 and SRE practices; instituted operating mechanisms (CAB incident/postincident reviews error budgets) that improved MTTR and change success rate.

• Security/compliance depth: NIST 80053 ISO 27001 (evidence management and continuous control monitoring expectations).

• FinOps leadership: cost governance optimization showback/chargeback and executive reporting.

• Excellent stakeholder management: executive communication QBRs risk/ROI storytelling and crossfunctional alignment.

• Experience leading organizational change (e.g. IaC adoption SRE AIOps) with clear OKRs/SLOs and adoption metrics.

• Proven ability to build develop and successionplan multidisciplinary teams; attracts and scales talent in highgrowth regulated environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience defining strategy and measurable use cases for AI in operations (e.g. AWS Bedrock Azure AI Foundry) across automation observability and compliance.

• Understanding of AI governance model security and responsible AI practices in regulated environments.

• Familiarity with FedRAMP for government workloads.

Working Model

• Global coverage; on-call rotation for critical services.

• Reston VA vicinity; Hybrid/remote flexibility; periodic travel.

Working at ICF

Pay Range - There are multiple factors that are considered in determining final pay for a position including but not limited to relevant work experience skills certifications and competencies that align to the specified role geographic location education and certifications as well as contract provisions regarding labor categories that are specific to the position.

The pay range for this position based on full-time employment is: