Director - Platform Operations

The Director of Platform Operations is a key leadership role responsible for ensuring the stability, scalability, and reliability of Verisign's production systems and infrastructure. This individual will lead a high-performing team to manage core platform services, enforce operational excellence, and drive continuous improvement in system performance, security, and incident management. As a member of the technology leadership team, this role also helps shape and execute strategic initiatives that support organizational growth and resilience.

Responsibilities

• Ensure adherence to all operational and security controls, including vulnerability management, patching, and regulatory compliance frameworks such as SOX and SOC
• Oversee the deployment, maintenance, and lifecycle management of on-premise hardware infrastructure within private data centers, ensuring reliability, scalability, and compliance with physical and operational standards
• Direct the day-to-day and strategic activities of the platform operations team, ensuring alignment with organizational goals, policies, and procedures
• Define and track key operational metrics to assess performance, reliability, and service health
• Monitor system performance and proactively implement optimizations and automation to improve efficiency and availability
• Maintain comprehensive documentation for all operational processes and procedures, ensuring audit readiness and knowledge transfer
• Develop and manage the annual budget for platform operations, ensuring alignment with organizational priorities and efficient use of resources
• Manage and continuously improve the on-call rotation for all production environments, prioritizing resilience and responsiveness
• Lead root cause analysis and postmortem reviews for critical incidents, driving corrective actions and systemic improvements
• Deliver training and guidance to Tier 1 support teams, enabling effective first-line operational coverage
• Collaborate with development and architecture teams to align operational practices with Agile and DevOps methodologies
• Actively participate in technology leadership forums, contributing insights on infrastructure trends and evolving operational strategies
• Lead recruitment, development, and retention efforts to build and maintain a diverse, engaged, and high-performing team
• Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement

Qualifications

• 12+ years of progressive experience in IT infrastructure, platform engineering, or operations roles
• Deep expertise in cloud infrastructure, virtualization, container orchestration, networking, databases, and systems security
• Demonstrated success managing high-availability systems in large-scale, mission-critical environments
• Strong leadership and communication skills, with the ability to influence across technical and non-technical teams
• Proven experience with incident response, capacity planning, and operational readiness at an enterprise level
• Skilled in performance tuning, observability practices, and service-level management
• Self-directed and results-oriented, with a strong sense of accountability and execution

Preferred Skills

• Hands-on experience with Agile, DevOps practices, and CI/CD pipelines
• Proficiency with public cloud platforms (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) and virtualization technologies (e.g., VMware, KVM)
• Familiarity with container platforms such as Kubernetes and OpenStack
• Strong analytical skills for diagnosing complex issues and implementing systemic improvements
• Experience managing distributed/global teams and fostering collaboration across time zones
• Experience managing change management and organizational transformation initiatives
• Technical knowledge of RedHat and FreeBSD environments

This position is based in our Reston, VA office and offers a hybrid work schedule.

The pay range is $180,700- $244,500.

The anticipated annual base salary range for this position is noted above, however, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, experience. Verisign offers a discretionary bonus which is based on individual and company performance, and certain roles may be eligible for discretionary stock awards.