Director of DevOps - Baltimore City Office of Information & Technology

THIS IS A NON-CIVIL SERVICE POSITION

Salary Range:

$126,246.00 - $208,130.00 Annually

Get to Know Us

Welcome to the City of Baltimore! Experience the reward of a fulfilling career and enjoy the added element of excitement in a vibrant, diverse atmosphere. The City of Baltimore offers limitless opportunities to help drive social impact, both on the job and in the community, while serving its citizens. Join us in making Baltimore a great place to live and work. In the City of Baltimore, we hire great people and provide them with the skills and opportunities to grow toward their career aspirations. If you are looking for a career change or interested in learning more, explore our opportunities and benefits programs. We are excited to have you as a part of the City of Baltimore Team! The City offers medical, prescription drug, dental, vision, optional life, AD&D, and FSA plans. This office also supplies wellness programs, support groups, and workshops. You can learn about our benefits here: https://humanresources.baltimorecity.gov/hr-divisions/benefits

Job Summary

The Director of DevOps reports to the Director of Applications and leads the strategy, implementation, and operation of Baltimore City's application delivery and hosting platforms. This role is accountable for the reliability, security, and scalability of development and hosting environments that support critical City services.

The Director provides technical leadership, operational oversight, and team management for DevOps engineers and related technical staff. The role ensures that applications built by Baltimore City teams and partner agencies are deployed, maintained, and operated using modern DevOps practices across on-premises infrastructure and Microsoft Azure cloud environments.

This position requires technical expertise, operational leadership, and stakeholder engagement, working closely with software developers, architects, cybersecurity teams, and agency leadership to deliver resilient and secure digital services.

The successful candidate must translate technical concepts for executive leadership while engaging directly with engineering teams and operational staff.

Essential Functions

DevOps Leadership and Operations

• Lead the City's DevOps engineering and platform operations teams, setting priorities and accountability for reliable application delivery.
• Oversee the administration and reliability of application hosting environments across on-premises data centers and Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure.
• Ensure operational excellence for application platforms, including environments hosted on Microsoft IIS and Azure-based services.
• Set direction for CI/CD, automation, and infrastructure-as-code standards, and hold teams accountable for their adoption and maturity.

Strategy, Budget, and Resource Management

• Develop and maintain a multi-year DevOps and hosting platform roadmap aligned with BCIT and City modernization goals.
• Develop and manage the DevOps budget, including tooling, licensing, and cloud consumption and cost optimization.
• Manage vendor, contractor, and licensing relationships, including scope, performance, and renewals.
• Lead workforce planning, hiring, and skills development for the DevOps function.
• Ensure disaster recovery and business continuity plans are in place and regularly tested for hosted applications.
• Evaluate and introduce automation and AI-assisted tooling that improves delivery speed and reliability.

Infrastructure and Platform Management

• Own the strategy, lifecycle, and capacity planning for the platforms that host City applications, including: Windows Server environments. web hosting platforms. Azure App Services and cloud-hosted infrastructure. DevOps automation platforms and pipelines.
• Ensure DevOps platforms are secure, resilient, and scalable to support City agency systems.
• Define service-level objectives and operational metrics, including availability, performance, deployment frequency, change failure rate, and time to restore, and report on them to BCIT leadership.

DevOps Platform Engineering

• Own the DevOps toolchain roadmap and standards, including Source control and repository management. Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) platforms. Artifact management. Infrastructure automation.
• Implement automation and platform improvements that accelerate delivery of new software solutions.

Security, Compliance, and Governance

• Ensure DevOps infrastructure and deployment pipelines adhere to Information Security standards and best practices.
• Maintain configuration management, security controls, and operational guardrails across hosting platforms.
• Partner with Information Security teams to ensure compliance with security policies and vulnerability management processes.
• Establish and maintain standards for source control, code review, CI/CD pipelines, deployment approvals, and release management across application teams, and monitor adherence to those standards.
• Own the change management process for application and platform releases, including change requests, risk and impact assessment, Change Management participation, emergency change procedures, and post-implementation review.

Developer Platform Support

• Work closely with application development teams to ensure they have the tools, environments, and guidance needed to successfully deliver solutions.
• Lead coordination with application development teams on supported technology stacks and deployment requirements.
• Provide architectural guidance related to deployment strategies, environment design, and operational readiness.
• Establish DevOps practices across the software development lifecycle, including source control, code review, automated testing, release planning, deployment, and operational handoff.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Interface with agency leadership, subject matter experts, and executive stakeholders across Baltimore City government.
• Translate operational and infrastructure concepts into clear business terms for leadership audiences.
• Lead DevOps delivery for cross-agency initiatives in coordination with application, infrastructure, and security leaders.

Team Leadership

• Direct and develop the Deputy Director of DevOps and, through them, DevOps engineers and platform staff.
• Build and mentor the DevOps team, and clarify roles and decision rights across DevOps and application teams.
• Promote a culture of automation, reliability, security, and continuous improvement.
• Set operational priorities and direct incident response and platform improvement initiatives.

Minimum Qualifications

Education: Have a Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field. Equivalent professional experience may be considered in lieu of formal education.

AND

Experience:

• Ten or more years of experience in application development and maintenance, IT infrastructure, DevOps, cloud engineering, and related technical roles.
• Four or more years of experience in technical leadership or team management.
• Experience managing enterprise-scale application hosting environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience administering or leading the use of Azure DevOps Server and Azure DevOps Services, including repositories, pipelines, permissions, and deployment controls.

Work Requirements

This role participates in after-hours escalation for critical incidents and planned maintenance as needed.

Additional Information

Background Check

Eligible candidates under final consideration for appointment to positions identified as positions of trust will be required to complete authorization for a Criminal Background Check and/or Fingerprinting must be successfully completed.

Probation

All persons, including current City employees, selected for this position must complete a mandatory six-month/one-year probation.

Financial Disclosure

This position is required to complete a Financial Disclosure pursuant to Sections 7-7, 7-8, and 7-9 of the City Ethics Law. The initial financial disclosure must be submitted within 30 days of hire.

Baltimore City Government is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer, and we are committed to a workplace that values diversity, equity, and inclusion. The City of Baltimore prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, age, sex, ancestry, creed, national origin, disability status, genetics, marital status, military service, sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state, or local laws. Applicants requiring accommodations during the hiring process should contact the Department of Human Resources directly. Do not attach your request for accommodation to the application.

BALTIMORE CITY IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER