Principal Cloud Operations Manager

About the role

Why AIS? When you join AIS, you're joining a mission-driven team that's passionate about making a difference. You'll work on projects that matter, alongside industry-leading experts, in an environment that fosters innovation, driving client success, and empowering our team to make a lasting impact. As an employee-owned company, we value collaboration, inclusivity, continuous growth, and shared success.

Employee Ownership: Your contributions directly impact the company's success, and you share in its achievements. Continuous Learning: Access to resources, training, and mentorship to support your professional growth. Inclusive Culture: A workplace where diversity is celebrated, and everyone's voice is valued. Mission-Driven Work: Engage in projects that make a meaningful difference for our clients and communities.

What are we looking for? At AIS, we're looking for more than just skills - we're looking for driven individuals who are passionate about making a difference, eager to grow, and aligned with our core principles. Working@AIS At AIS, we are dedicated to providing our employees with diverse opportunities to grow their careers while supporting a variety of impactful projects.

For this position, we are seeking a talented individual to join AIS as a Director of Operations. As your initial project assignment, you will support the unique needs of our client as a Principal Cloud Operations Manager. Project Summary Lead enterprise-scale Operations & Maintenance (O&M) services for a large Defense Industrial Base customer operating Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365.

This is a junior-executive-level, customer-facing leadership position accountable for service performance, operational maturity, customer confidence, and successful transition of new capabilities into steady-state operations.

Key Responsibilities

Own end-to-end operational performance and enterprise service outcomes across Azure, Microsoft 365, Entra ID, endpoint management, collaboration, messaging, security, and related cloud platforms. Lead, develop, and align a growing multidisciplinary organization of engineers, administrators, technical leads, and support professionals, scaling to support an organization of more than 100 team members.

Establish and drive a data-driven operational model leveraging SLAs, KPIs, MTTA/MTTR, backlog aging, incident trends, reopen rates, service health, customer satisfaction, and capacity planning measures. Serve as the primary executive-facing operational leader, proactively identifying risks, anticipating customer needs, communicating service health in business terms, and recommending solutions before issues escalate.

Manage multiple concurrent priorities including major incidents, operational risks, workforce capacity, service transitions, customer escalations, corrective actions, and continuous improvement initiatives. Ensure disciplined incident and problem management practices by overseeing root cause analysis, corrective action plans, accountability tracking, due dates, and measurable reduction in recurring issues.

Own the operational readiness and service transition framework, ensuring new services are successfully integrated into production operations and support environments. Partner with project managers, architects, engineers, security teams, service owners, and customer stakeholders to define operational acceptance criteria for new and enhanced services.

Lead formal Operational Readiness Reviews (ORRs) and provide risk-based recommendations regarding service acceptance and production deployment readiness.

Validate that all operational prerequisites are in place prior to service acceptance, including support ownership models, RACI definitions, escalation procedures, monitoring and alerting capabilities, ServiceNow integration, runbooks/SOPs/ knowledge management documentation, access model, SLA/KPIs, staffing requirements, business continuity plans, and security/compliance evidence.

Establish remediation plans and transition-risk mitigation strategies when operational exceptions are required, while measuring post-transition stability and incorporating lessons learned into future service onboarding activities.

Provide technical leadership and operational oversight across Microsoft cloud technologies, including Azure, Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Intune, Defender, Purview, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and core Azure infrastructure services.

Maintain sufficient technical depth to challenge assumptions, assess operational risk, contribute to architecture reviews, and lead technical discussions during incidents and service lifecycle planning.

Required For This Opportunity 10+ years of progressive experience in enterprise IT operations, managed services, cloud operations, infrastructure operations, or service delivery; 5+ years in senior leadership with direct accountability for production service outcomes. Documented responsibility for an enterprise environment of at least 10,000 users.

Demonstrated leadership of a large technical organization of approximately 50+ engineers, administrators, support personnel, or equivalent multidisciplinary delivery staff. Proven data-driven management: personally used operational metrics to set priorities, manage performance, identify systemic issues, allocate capacity, and drive measurable service improvement.

Direct ownership of SLAs/KPIs, service reviews, major incidents, escalations, backlog, corrective actions, and continuous improvement-not merely project coordination or status reporting. Significant experience transitioning new technology services from project delivery into production O&M, including operational acceptance criteria, readiness reviews/service acceptance, risk disposition, and post-transition stabilization.

• Meaningful technical leadership experience with both Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 in production enterprise environments.
• Executive-level customer experience, including regular briefings to director/VP/CIO/CISO or equivalent stakeholders and demonstrated ability to anticipate customer needs.
• Experience in federal, defense, DIB, aerospace, manufacturing, or another highly regulated environment and practical use of ServiceNow.

• Deep understanding of change management concepts, processes, and risk management.
• Demonstrated ability to manage several high-priority operational, technical, customer, and organizational efforts concurrently without losing ownership or follow-through.
• Willingness and ability to travel on-site for up to one week per quarter (approximately four weeks per year).

• Must not be a current owner/operator, founder, or active managing partner of a managed service provider (MSP).
• Microsoft Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900).
• Microsoft 365 Fundamentals (MS-900), earned before the exam retirement date, or AB-900.

Nice to Have Skills Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104), Microsoft 365 Administrator Expert (MS-102) or other advanced Microsoft role-based certification; HDI Support Center Manager/Director; Security+, CISSP, CISM, or CCSP. GCC High and/or Azure Government experience; CUI, ITAR, NIST 800-171, CMMC, or comparable compliance-driven operations.

Experience leading geographically distributed teams, subcontractors, vendors, or multiple delivery organizations within one managed service. Managing@AIS As an AIS People Manager, your responsibilities will include: Coaching: Helping employees navigate challenges, strengthen relationships, and grow the skills that support success at AIS.

• Career Development: Supporting employees in exploring growth opportunities at AIS and aligning development plans to reach their goals.
• Performance Management: Creating clarity through clear expectations, regular feedback, and proactive support when performance concerns arise.
• Accountability and Results: Holding employees accountable for meeting expectations, delivering results, and adhering to company policies and values.

Promotions and

Compensation

Partnering with HR to evaluate and recommend promotions, salary adjustments, and rewards that reflect performance and potential. Timecard Approval: Ensuring accurate and timely approval of timecards. At AIS, we are committed to offering competitive and fair compensation that reflects the skills, experience, and contributions of each team member. The targeted base salary range for this role is $165,000-$248,000 per year.

Please note that this range is provided as a guideline and the final offer will be based on several factors, including but not limited to, skillset and competencies, level of experience, education, certifications, and location. We value transparency in our hiring process and are happy to discuss how your unique qualifications align with our compensation structure during the interview process.

Employment decisions are based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs.