Principal CloudOps Engineer

We’re looking for an experienced Principal Cloud Operations Engineer to join our team in Barcelona. You’ll play a senior technical leadership role in designing, operating, and continuously improving the cloud infrastructure that underpins Sage HCM – our recently acquired HR and payroll platform (formerly Criterion), now expanding across North America, the UK, and Canada.

The platform runs on AWS and you’ll join at an exciting early stage, going through a structured handover with the existing technical team. You’ll be expected to be highly autonomous and to quickly become the go-to cloud operations expert for the product. Whilst the role sits within a people-managed team, the technical direction of the cloud estate will be substantially yours to own.

This is a hybrid role requiring 3 days per week in our Barcelona office.

First 90 days
30 Days: Gain a thorough understanding of the Sage HCM platform architecture and the existing cloud infrastructure. Begin the structured handover with the current technical contractors, meet your team and key cross-functional stakeholders, and familiarise yourself with Sage’s engineering standards and ways of working.

60 Days: Take active ownership of day-to-day cloud operations for the platform. Contribute to incident response, observability improvements, and cost optimisation initiatives. Begin identifying toil and automation opportunities, and start influencing the operational standards and SOPs for the product.

90 Days: Own the cloud operations strategy for Sage HCM end-to-end. Lead the completion of the contractor handover, establish robust platform standards, and act as the senior technical voice in architecture and product shaping discussions. Begin mentoring and upskilling engineers on the team.

Meet the Team
You’ll join a distributed Cloud Operations team spanning Barcelona, Newcastle, and beyond, working closely with engineering, product, and security colleagues across the globe. Your line manager is the Engineering Manager for Cloud Operations, who leads with a strong focus on autonomy and technical excellence.

Given the acquisition context, you’ll also collaborate closely with contractors based in Eastern Europe during the initial handover period, before taking full ownership of the platform’s cloud infrastructure as a permanent team member.

How Success Will Be Measured

Reliability, security, and performance of the Sage HCM cloud environment

Measurable reductions in operational toil through automation and tooling

Quality and completeness of platform documentation, SOPs, and runbooks

Speed and effectiveness of incident response and root cause resolution

Contribution to cost optimisation and total cost of ownership reduction

Thought leadership in DevOps/SRE culture and mentorship of engineers

Skills You’ll Gain

Deep, hands-on knowledge of AWS cloud infrastructure at scale

Experience owning a cloud platform through a post-acquisition integration

Leadership experience driving DevOps and SRE culture across a global team

Advanced observability and incident management practices in a production environment

Cross-functional collaboration within a mature, agile product organisation

Snapshot of Your Day-to-Day
You’ll own the cloud operations of Sage HCM on AWS, building automation and self-service tooling that allows engineering teams to move faster with less operational overhead. You’ll monitor platform health, lead incident response, and drive continuous improvement across reliability, security, and cost. You’ll define and maintain Infrastructure as Code, manage CI/CD pipelines, and ensure the platform meets its compliance obligations.

You’ll work closely with the Engineering Manager and product stakeholders to influence technical direction, and you’ll mentor engineers across the team. Given the platform’s presence in the US market, occasional out-of-hours availability is expected – consistent with a senior operations role.

Qualifications

10+ years of experience in IT, with substantial exposure to CloudOps, DevOps, or SRE

Minimum 5 years of hands-on cloud experience – AWS strongly preferred; Azure or GCP experience also valued

Deep knowledge of cloud-native technologies: Kubernetes, Docker, AWS ECS/Fargate, AKS, and serverless

Hands-on experience with IaC tooling (Terraform, AWS CDK, CloudFormation, or Azure Bicep)

Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, or equivalent)

Proven use of observability platforms such as Datadog, New Relic, or Sumo Logic

Scripting proficiency in Python, Bash, PowerShell, or Ruby

Experience with Pentaho reporting is a plus but not mandatory

Strong understanding of cloud security best practices and compliance frameworks (SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA)

Familiarity with ITIL frameworks: Change Control, Incident Management, Configuration Management

Excellent communication skills – able to explain complex technical topics clearly to non-technical stakeholders

Fluency in English; Spanish fluency is a plus

Want to know more about our Product?: https://hcm.sage.com/

At Sage, we offer you an environment where you can grow professionally without compromising your personal well-being. Our benefits package is designed to provide stability, flexibility, and balance:

Medical and dental insurance: Fully funded medical and dental insurance.

Flexible benefits: Exchange part of your salary and make tax savings on meal and transport vouchers, childcare, and training.

Well-being: Free access to the Calm app (for up to 5 users), 24/7 counselling, and emotional support from our Healthy Mind Coaches. We also offer self-care and parenting resources through the Cleo app.

Flexible working: flexibility of working one hour in, one hour out, shortened workdays on Fridays and during the summer, and the opportunity to work from over 40 countries for up to 10 weeks per year through our Work Away program.

Annual leave: 23 working days of vacation, 5 paid days per year for volunteering.

Extended leave: 7 extra days of maternity leave and 5 extra days of paternity leave, on top of the legal allowance, available after one year of service.

Financial support: Life and disability insurance, salary advances of up to 3.5 times your net monthly pay, a €300 net marriage bonus, and access to Sage's employee stock purchase plan at a discounted rate.

Learning and development: Free premium subscription to external learning platforms

Health and Safety Responsibilities

Fostering the safety culture, by leading with your own example.

Following established safety procedures and reporting potential hazards promptly helps maintain a secure and efficient workplace.

Participating in safety training sessions and adhering to preventive guidelines and procedures, the objective is minimizing risks and protecting yourself and the rest of your colleagues.

#LI-AL2