About the Rainforest Alliance:

The Rainforest Alliance's mission is to protect forests, improve the livelihoods of farmers and forest communities, promote human rights, and help mitigate climate change by transforming business practices, land use, and consumer behavior. It partners with farmers, businesses, and governments to implement sustainable solutions for environmental and social challenges. The organization offers a positive work environment, emphasizing collaboration, purposeful impact, and opportunities for professional growth. Employees value its commitment to sustainability and ethical standards. Working there allows individuals to contribute to meaningful global change.

Overview:

We are seeking a highly skilled and hands-on Director of Technology Operations to lead and optimise IT Operations, Platform Operations, and Data Platforms. This role requires a leader who combines strategic vision with hands-on execution, and ensures the reliability, scalability, and security of mission-critical systems.

The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in IT infrastructure, cloud platforms, data management, and operational excellence.

Key Responsibilities:

Operational Leadership & Strategy:

• Supervise and enhance IT Operations, Platform Operations, and Data Platforms, ensuring high availability, reliability, and security.
• Develop and implement strategies to optimise system performance, automate processes, and reduce operational risks.
• Actively engage in incident management, root cause analysis, and continuous service improvement to minimise downtime.
• Establish and implement operational best practices, frameworks (e.g., ITIL, DevOps, SRE), and governance policies.

IT & Infrastructure Operations:

• Ensure IT infrastructure (networks, servers, cloud, on-premise, and hybrid environments) is secure, scalable, and cost-effective.
• Supervise enterprise IT services, cybersecurity, compliance, and disaster recovery strategies.
• Partner with security teams to implement data protection policies and mitigate risks.

Platform Operations & Reliability:

• Lead platform operations teams to maintain uptime, system health, and performance across cloud and on-prem platforms.
• Implement observability, monitoring, and alerting solutions for proactive issue detection.
• Drive automation and CI/CD best practices to improve platform efficiency.
• Collaborate with engineering and DevOps teams to enhance scalability, deployment processes, and service resilience.

Data Platform Management:

• Supervise data platforms, data lakes, and data pipelines, ensuring scalability and reliability for data processing.
• Ensure data governance, security, and compliance with regulatory requirements.
• Partner with data engineering teams to optimise performance, storage, and analytics capabilities.
• Implement strategies for data availability, disaster recovery, and integrity.

Incident Management & Service Excellence:

• Be responsible for the incident response process, ensuring swift resolution, clear communication, and post-mortem analysis.
• Develop SLA (Service Level Agreement) and SLO (Service Level Objective) metrics to measure and enhance service reliability.
• Foster a continuous improvement culture, ensuring lessons learned from incidents drive operational enhancements.

Team Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration:

• Build and mentor high-performing IT, Platform Operations, and Data Platform teams.
• Foster a collaborative DevOps/SRE culture, ensuring alignment between engineering, IT, and business stakeholders.
• Establish good relationships with vendors, cloud providers, and third-party service providers to optimise operational performance.

Financial & Performance Management:

• Handle budgets, cost optimisation, and vendor contracts for IT infrastructure, platforms, and data operations.
• Track key KPIs (uptime, MTTR, MTBF, incident resolution times, platform efficiency) and drive data-driven decision-making.
• Ensure compliance with industry standards, governance policies, and security regulations.
  

Limited Travel: There is an expectation that the successful candidate will need to travel to different sites based on the business needs.

Key Skills & Experience:

• 10+ years of experience in IT operations, platform engineering, or data platform management, with at least 5 years in a leadership role.
• Expertise in cloud computing (AWS, GCP, Azure), networking, security, and enterprise IT management.
• Strong knowledge of DevOps, SRE principles, ITIL, and incident management best practices.
• Hands-on experience with monitoring tools (Datadog, Splunk, Prometheus, etc.), automation, and CI/CD pipelines.
• Experience managing large-scale data platforms, data lakes, and data governance frameworks.
• Strong leadership, stakeholder management, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Proven ability to balance strategy with hands-on execution, thriving in a dynamic, high-impact role.
• Desired experience leading Architecture or Solution Delivery teams.

Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Operations Management, Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field.
• Relevant certifications (preferred but not required based on focus area):
• IT Operations & Infrastructure: ITIL, TOGAF, PMP
• Cloud & Platform Operations: AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud certifications (Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer)
• Data Platforms & Governance: CDMP (Certified Data Management Professional), DAMA, Snowflake, or Big Data-related certifications
• Project & Change Management: PMP (Project Management Professional), Agile/Scrum Master, Lean Six Sigma

Why Join Us?

• Opportunity to own and transform IT, platform, and data operations in a fast-growing environment.
• Work with cutting-edge technology and drive innovation in reliability, automation, and scalability.

Level:1A

Deadline: 28 March 2025

Salary: For USA based candidates only:

• National Salary range (Excluding NY and DC) - $95,746 - $136,780
• New York Salary Range - $104,278 - $148,969
• Washington DC Salary Range - $102,448 - $146,355

Notes: Only candidates legally authorized to work in the UK or the US will be considered.

If you have any questions about the job vacancy, please contact the HR department: recruitment@ra.org

The Rainforest Alliance encourages diversity and inclusion across the global organization. With this commitment to diversity, we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, ages, disability and any other protected group.