Head of Managed Services (Private Cloud)

Role Overview

As the Head of Managed Services at ThingsBoard, you will be the founder and leader of our new Private Cloud department. This is a critical business unit where the "Product" is the seamless operation, performance, and reliability of ThingsBoard instances in the cloud. You will lead a team of Customer Reliability Engineers (CREs) and Technical Account Managers (TAMs) to ensure that our largest customers receive a premium, "zero-friction" experience.

Key Responsibilities

1. Team Leadership & Motivation

• Build the Culture: Foster a "CRE mindset" where engineers are motivated to automate repetitive tasks and take pride in 99.9% uptime.
• Mentorship: Conduct 1-on-1s, identify skill gaps, and provide the team with the tools (including AI-driven automation) they need to succeed.
• Resource Management: Manage the hiring roadmap and on-call rotations to ensure 24/7 coverage without team burnout.

2. Process Ownership & Maintenance

• The Playbook: Design and maintain the internal "Standard Operating Procedures" (SOPs) for deployment, patching, and incident response.
• SLA Enforcement: Define and monitor Service Level Agreements (SLAs). You are responsible for ensuring we meet our promises to the customer.
• Operational Excellence: Ensure every technical fix is documented in the Internal Knowledge Base to prevent recurring issues.

3. Strategic Customer Management ("Know Your Customer")

• Usage Insights: Deeply understand how our customers use ThingsBoard (device counts, data frequency) to anticipate scaling needs.
• Voice of the Customer: Act as the internal advocate for Private Cloud clients, providing feedback to the core Product team on how to make the platform more "manageable."
• Escalation Point: Serve as the final point of contact for high-value customers during critical incidents or complex business discussions.

4. Continuous Improvement & FinOps

• Margin Optimization: Constantly look for ways to reduce our cloud spend (AWS/Azure/GCP) while maintaining performance.
• Automation First: Drive the team to replace manual "tinkering" with automated scripts and AI-augmented workflows.
• Efficiency: Reduce the "Time to Onboard" for new customers through process refinement.

5. Strategic Task Prioritization

• The Buffer: Protect the team from "feature creep" and distractions. You decide what is a "Critical Priority" vs. what can wait.
• Roadmap Alignment: Balance technical debt (fixing the infrastructure) with business growth (onboarding new clients).

Requirements & Skills

Technical Awareness

• Cloud Literacy: You understand VPCs, Load Balancers, Managed Databases, and Kubernetes. You don’t need to be the one writing the code, but you must be able to "speak the language" and validate the team's technical decisions.
• Architecture Mindset: Ability to understand the ThingsBoard stack and how it interacts with different cloud provider services.

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Conflict Resolution: You are the calm in the storm. Whether it’s a heated discussion between Sales and Engineering or a frustrated customer during an outage, you find the "Win-Win" solution.
• Proactive Problem Solving: You don't wait for a ticket to be filed. You see a bottleneck in the onboarding process and fix it before the next customer arrives.
• Communication: Ability to translate deep technical metrics (latency, IOPS, CPU steal) into business value for the CEO and customers.

Experience

• 5+ years in a leadership role within a SaaS, MSP, or DevOps environment.
• Proven experience in managing customer relationships and technical service delivery.
• Experience with SLA management and high-availability systems.

Why Join This Role?

You aren't just managing a team; you are building a new revenue stream for ThingsBoard. You have the autonomy to define the tools, the processes, and the team structure from day one.

Success in the first 90 days looks like:

• 30 Days: Complete audit of current manual deployment steps and identification of the first three automation targets.
• 60 Days: Launch of the first version of the "Private Cloud Playbook" and Internal Knowledge Base.
• 90 Days: Successful, "quiet" onboarding of a new client where the process was 80% automated and documented.

What We Offer?

• Work on a global product (open-source IoT, over 20k GitHub stars).
• Clear tasks and team support.
• Career growth and regular reviews.
• Medical insurance or compensation program.
• 17 vacation days and 10 sick leaves.
• Corporate English classes.
• Comfortable office in Kyiv (Podil) + flexible schedule.