[Remote] VP of Cloud Engineering, Operations & Delivery

Note: The job is a remote job and is open to candidates in USA. EXL is seeking an experienced VP of Cloud Engineering, Operations & Delivery to lead their cloud practice across various industry verticals. This role involves driving strategy, client relationships, and organizational growth while ensuring high-performing teams deliver complex multi-cloud solutions. The ideal candidate will blend technical authority with executive leadership to transform cloud infrastructure using AI and intelligent automation.ResponsibilitiesServe as the senior technical authority for cloud architecture and infrastructure decisions across AWS, Azure, and GCPAdvance and mature our Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices — Github, Jenkins, Terraform, Qualys, Sonarqube, etc. — ensuring consistency, security, and scalability across client environmentsProvide meaningful technical guidance and architectural direction to engineering teams — going beyond high-level oversight to engage substantively on design decisions, standards, and delivery qualityGuide adoption of cloud-native patterns including Kubernetes (EKS/AKS/GKE), serverless, CI/CD automation, and event-driven architectureLead architecture reviews and serve as the escalation point for complex technical challengesEnsure security and compliance are embedded into infrastructure from the ground up — spanning IAM design, network segmentation, secrets management, and frameworks such as SOC 2, NIST, CIS, HIPAA, and PCI-DSSChampion the adoption of AI agents and multi-agent systems to transform how cloud infrastructure is built, operated, and optimized — moving teams from reactive, manual workflows to intelligent, autonomous executionIdentify high-value opportunities to introduce agentic workflows into engineering operations — including infrastructure provisioning, incident detection and remediation, cost optimization, compliance monitoring, security response, and deployment pipelinesLead the evaluation and adoption of agentic AI frameworks and platforms (e.g., LangGraph, AutoGen, Amazon Bedrock Agents, Azure AI Agent Service, Vertex AI Agent Builder) to build purpose-built agents that extend the capabilities of our engineering teamsDefine governance, guardrails, and human-in-the-loop checkpoints for agentic systems operating in cloud environments — ensuring autonomous actions are safe, auditable, and aligned with client expectationsCollaborate with engineering and solutions teams to design agentic delivery pipelines — where AI agents assist in code generation, IaC validation, drift detection, security scanning, and release orchestrationWork with peer technology teams to identify process transformation opportunities — helping envision, roadmap and execute an agentic future state for cloud operations and engineering workflowsOwn the operational health of cloud environments across the client portfolio — including availability, performance, security posture, and cost efficiencyMature SRE practices across the organization: SLOs, error budgets, incident management, and blameless postmortemsDrive FinOps discipline — optimizing cloud spend through right-sizing, commitment strategies, tagging governance, and anomaly detection — increasingly augmented by AI-driven insights and autonomous recommendationsDefine and enforce observability standards across logging, metrics, and tracing using Datadog and CloudWatch — and explore how agentic monitoring can move teams from alert fatigue to autonomous resolutionLead end-to-end delivery of cloud engineering engagements — from technical discovery and architecture through deployment, cutover, and steady-state operationsBuild scalable delivery frameworks, runbooks, and IaC-driven playbooks that can be applied consistently across verticals and client environments — and actively work to make those playbooks AI-executable over timeProactively identify technical risks and drive resolution before they become client issuesBuild, mentor, and retain a high-performing team of cloud engineers, DevOps engineers, SREs, and delivery managers — cultivating a team culture that embraces AI-augmented workflows as a force multiplier, not a threatDefine clear career ladders, engineering standards, and technical growth paths that attract and retain top talent — including emerging skills in AI/ML infrastructure, prompt engineering, and agentic system designFoster a culture of engineering excellence, continuous learning, and genuine curiosity about what AI agents can unlockCommunicate cloud strategy, delivery status, and technical decisions clearly to executive stakeholders — both internally and with clientsHelp clients articulate and develop their agentic transformation roadmap — translating the potential of AI agents into concrete, phased business outcomesParticipate in pre-sales and client-facing conversations with enough technical depth to build confidence and credibilityTranslate cloud provider roadmaps — including rapidly evolving AI and agent capabilities from AWS, Azure, and GCP — into strategic investments and differentiated service offeringsRepresent the engineering organization in leadership discussions, helping align technical capabilities with business growth objectivesSkills12+ years of experience in cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, or DevOps — with at least 4 years in a senior leadership capacityStrong working knowledge of AWS, Azure, and GCP — you understand how these platforms work in practice, not just in principle; professional-level certifications are a plusSolid, proven experience with Infrastructure as Code — particularly Terraform — including best practices around module design, state management, GitOps workflows, and policy enforcementDemonstrated experience leading cloud delivery programs for enterprise clients across multiple industriesPractical exposure to AI agents and agentic frameworks — you've either built, deployed, or operated AI agent systems in a production or near-production context and understand how to design reliable, governed agentic workflowsA creative, process-transformation mindset — you look at how work gets done today and can credibly envision how intelligent agents could do it better, faster, and more reliably tomorrowWorking knowledge of Kubernetes in production environments and modern CI/CD practicesFamiliarity with cloud security frameworks and compliance requirements relevant to multi-vertical client environmentsA track record of building and developing high-performing engineering teamsExceptional communication skills — able to engage engineers at a technical level and translate that into clear, confident messaging for executives and clients alikeHands-on experience with agentic AI platforms such as LangGraph, AutoGen, Amazon Bedrock Agents, Azure AI Agent Service, or Vertex AI Agent BuilderExperience designing multi-agent architectures — including agent orchestration, tool use, memory management, and human-in-the-loop design patternsFamiliarity with LLM integration patterns in cloud-native applications — RAG pipelines, vector databases, embedding workflows, and model hosting on cloud infrastructureExperience in a managed services or solutions provider environment serving diverse industry verticalsBackground in platform engineering or Internal Developer Platform (IDP) developmentFamiliarity with policy-as-code tools such as OPA, Sentinel, or CheckovAWS, Azure, and/or GCP professional-level certifications, including any AI/ML specialty certificationsBenefits20% bonusPerformance equityRemote RoleCompany OverviewEXL is a provider of Transformation and Outsourcing services to Global 1000 companies in multiple industries It was founded in 1999, and is headquartered in New York, New York, USA, with a workforce of 10001+ employees. Its website is http://www.exlservice.com.Company H1B SponsorshipEXL has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships, with 1 in 2025, 1 in 2020. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role.