Senior Manager, Infrastructure Operations and Compliance

Available Locations:

• Austin 
• Seattle
• Denver
• Atlanta 
• Washington DC

• Application Deadline: December 16, 2026

Position Overview

Cloudflare is looking for a Senior Manager to lead a unified Infrastructure Operations function spanning physical network reliability, operational security, and global regulatory compliance across 750+ data center sites in 125+ countries. The leader in this role ensures 24x7 operational availability of Cloudflare's network infrastructure through incident response, hardware break-fix, circuit management, and physical hardware lifecycle operations. This leader also owns  physical access control policy and administration, periodic access reviews, and evidence-based compliance delivery across SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, ISMAP, and IRAP.

You will lead two teams, setting organizational direction, building talent, and being accountable for outcomes across the full lifecycle of Cloudflare's physical infrastructure: from how hardware is deployed and maintained, to how access is controlled and reviewed, to how assets are securely retired and evidenced for audit. The breadth of this scope demands a leader who can hold the org-level tensions, speed versus rigor, global scale versus precise detail, partner dependency versus uncompromising standards, without losing either end.

You will bring credibility across both dimensions of this role. On the infrastructure side, a strong grasp of data center colocation environments, network architecture, and hardware operations as well as the judgment to lead managers and teams who live in that world every day. On the compliance side, the organizational instinct to maintain audit readiness continuously, not just at cycle time, and the stakeholder fluency to navigate relationships with GRC, government auditors, and strategic global partners. Above all, you will bring a bias toward building smarter processes, better tooling, and AI-assisted operations that multiply your team's capacity as Cloudflare's footprint continues to grow.

What You'll Do

Team Leadership

• Lead two teams, the Operations team and the Security and Compliance team.
• Set goals, develop talent, and build a culture of operational excellence and compliance-consciousness across both functions
• Hold both teams to shared SLAs and quality standards, balancing the urgency of 24x7 incident response with the rigor of compliance audit cycles
• Serve as the escalation point for cross-team issues, complex vendor negotiations, and decisions that touch both operational and regulatory domains

Unified Decommissioning Lifecycle

• Own the end-to-end DECOM process as a single, governed workflow: physical collections and unracking, secure asset destruction with CoD issuance (ITAD vendor management), serial number verification, compliance evidence filing, and records closure
• Eliminate the current handoff gap between Maintain's physical operations and DCSC's compliance oversight building a single, auditable pipeline from "decom triggered" to "evidence archived”.
• Drive ITAD vendor relationships, escalation paths, and contractual SLAs for asset destruction across all regions (APAC, EMEA, NASA, South America)
• Maintain audit-readiness of decommissioning records for SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and FedRAMP control requirements

Maintain Team Operational Accountability

• Accountable for 24x7 incident response coverage across all Cloudflare locations: carrier outages, DC facility issues, hardware degradation, and power/temperature events.
• Oversee hardware break-fix operations including coordination with Metro Technicians, third-party repair vendors and remote contractors.
• Drive maturity in circuit decommissioning, RMA management, and physical collections processes
• Ensure on-call schedules, handover protocols, and incident SLAs are consistently met across APAC, EMEA, and NASA shifts.

DCSC Compliance & Access Control Accountability

• Accountable for quarterly and monthly access review cycles (QAR/MAR) across 750+ global data center sites covering SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, FedRAMP Moderate/High, ISMAP, and IRAP frameworks
• Own the physical access provisioning and deprovisioning function, including SLA adherence and ACL integrity
• Serve as the senior owner of the team’s automation initiatives
• Maintain executive-level relationships with GRC leads across all active compliance frameworks; be the accountable voice for DCSC's control obligations in audit conversations
• Represent DCSC at Monthly Business Reviews and executive infrastructure health checks

Automation & Operational Efficiency

• Drive a meaningful reduction in manual operational burden across both teams identifying and prioritizing automation opportunities in access reviews, decommissioning evidence collection, portal data extraction, and incident triage
• Sponsor and guide the development of internal tooling (DCSC Portal, automation scripts, AI-assisted workflows) that multiplies team capacity without proportional headcount growth
• Evaluate and adopt AI tooling for repetitive operational tasks, documentation acceleration, root-cause analysis, and compliance evidence generation.

Who You Are

An experienced infrastructure operations leader. You have managed engineering teams responsible for large-scale, globally distributed physical or network infrastructure. You know how to hold a team accountable to 24x7 operational standards while also driving longer-horizon strategic work. You don't lose sight of the incident queue while building the roadmap.

Comfortable at the compliance/operations intersection. You don't need to be a GRC expert, but you understand why physical access controls matter for SOC 2 and FedRAMP, why the decommissioning chain of custody is an audit control, and why a missed quarterly access review has real consequences. You approach compliance not as overhead but as a non-negotiable quality dimension of operational work.

You ensure the teams you're inheriting are operationally capable but structurally manual. You see automation as a force multiplier and have a track record of reducing operational toil through process design, tooling investment, and thoughtful prioritization, not just through headcount.

A strong people leader with a coaching instinct. You manage managers. You know how to develop them, set clear expectations, give direct feedback, and create the conditions for high-performing teams. You build trust across functions and are comfortable representing your organization at the executive level.

Energized by global complexity. Your teams operate across APAC, EMEA, and NASA time zones, spanning hundreds of vendors, data center providers, and regulatory jurisdictions. You thrive in this environment rather than being overwhelmed by it.

Required Experience

• 7+ years in infrastructure operations, data center operations, network operations, or a closely related field, with at least 3 years in a people management role
• Demonstrated experience managing managers and holding multiple teams accountable to operational SLAs simultaneously
• Direct experience with physical data center operations including hardware lifecycle management, decommissioning, colocation vendor management, or break-fix operations
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks relevant to physical infrastructure: SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, or equivalent — at an operational (not auditor) level
• Strong program management instincts: comfortable running complex, multi-workstream initiatives with dependencies across teams, vendors, and time zones
• Proven track record of driving operational efficiency through process redesign or automation adoption
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to translate technical operational details into executive-level reporting and vice versa

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience managing 24x7 on-call operations teams, including PagerDuty or equivalent tooling and incident escalation frameworks
• Familiarity with network infrastructure concepts (circuit management, cross-connect decommissioning, network operations)
• Experience with physical access control systems, access control list management, or vendor portal administration at scale
• Knowledge of ITAD (IT Asset Disposition) vendor management and compliance requirements for secure destruction
• Background in a rapidly scaling, global infrastructure environment (hyperscaler, cloud provider, major CDN, or similar)
• Experience driving SSO or identity federation projects across large third-party vendor ecosystems
• Familiarity with Jira-based operational workflows, Netbox or similar DCIM tools, and Confluence-based documentation practices

Reporting Structure

This role reports to the Director, Infrastructure Operations (AMER) and is part of the broader Infrastructure Operations leadership team.

Compensation

• Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.

• For Colorado based hires: Estimated annual salary of $156,000 - $215,000.

• Washington (Kirkland), and Washington D.C. based hires: Estimated annual salary of $182,000 - $251,000.

Equity

• This role is eligible to participate in Cloudflare's equity plan.

Benefits

• Cloudflare offers a complete package of benefits and programs to support you and your family. Our benefits programs can help you pay health care expenses, support caregiving, build capital for the future and make life a little easier and fun! The below is a description of our benefits for employees in the United States, and benefits may vary for employees based outside the U.S.
• Health & Welfare Benefits
• Medical/Rx Insurance
• Dental Insurance
• Vision Insurance
• Flexible Spending Accounts
• Commuter Spending Accounts
• Fertility & Family Forming Benefits
• On-demand mental health support and Employee Assistance Program
• Global Travel Medical Insurance
• Financial Benefits
• Short and Long Term Disability Insurance
• Life & Accident Insurance
• 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
• Employee Stock Participation Plan
• Time Off
• Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave
• Leave programs, including parental, pregnancy health, medical, and bereavement leave