Sr Staff Cloud Engineer

Company Description

VERSANT is a leading force in news, sports and entertainment - home to iconic and trusted brands that inspire, inform, and delight audiences. Our unique combination of content, technology and services enriches the cultural fabric, igniting passions, sparking conversations, and connecting people to what they love most.

As an independent, publicly traded company, VERSANT brings together powerhouse cable networks - including USA Network, CNBC, MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), Oxygen, E!, SYFY, and Golf Channel - with dynamic digital and direct-to-consumer brands such as Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes, GolfNow, GolfPass, and SportsEngine. Together, these businesses reflect our commitment to delivering exceptional experiences across every screen and service.

VERSANT is an industry-changing media company fueled by innovation and an entrepreneurial spirit. With a strong foundation and a forward-looking vision, VERSANT empowers creativity, embraces change, and drives connection in an ever-evolving world.

Job Description

The Senior Staff Engineer – Cloud is a senior, hands-on technical leadership role responsible for defining, designing, building, and evolving VERSANT’s cloud infrastructure and platforms. This engineer will serve as a technical authority for cloud infrastructure, helping establish architecture, engineering standards, and reusable patterns across the organization. 

The role focuses primarily on AWS at enterprise scale, including multi-account environments, AWS Organizations, Control Tower, Identity Center, networking, and shared cloud services. The Senior Staff Engineer will lead the design of complex cloud solutions, establish cloud engineering standards, and drive automation through infrastructure as code and reusable infrastructure patterns. 

This role works across engineering teams and technology domains to solve complex infrastructure challenges and provide technical direction for strategic initiatives. The engineer will partner closely with application, infrastructure, network, security, and architecture teams and provide technical leadership and mentorship to other engineers. 

VERSANT operates a mix of legacy applications and modern cloud-native workloads, and this role will help define approaches for migrating, modernizing, and supporting these systems while ensuring consistent architecture and operational practices. 

Strong knowledge of hybrid connectivity between on-premises data centers, third parties, and cloud environments is required, including cross-account resource sharing and networking. Experience with Azure and GCP is a strong plus as the organization evolves its broader cloud capabilities. 

Key Responsibilities 

Cloud Architecture & Technical Leadership 

• Serve as a senior technical authority for cloud infrastructure and architecture. 

• Define and drive cloud architecture, engineering standards, patterns, and best practices across the organization. 

• Lead the design and implementation of complex, scalable, secure, highly available, and resilient cloud solutions. 

• Lead technical and architecture reviews for significant cloud initiatives. 

• Provide technical leadership for initiatives spanning multiple engineering teams and technology domains. 

• Evaluate new cloud technologies and provide recommendations for adoption and standardization. 

• Mentor engineers and help raise engineering standards across the organization. 

Cloud Infrastructure Engineering 

• Design, implement, and maintain cloud infrastructure primarily within AWS. 

• Architect environments across large multi-account AWS organizations using AWS Organizations and Control Tower. 

• Design secure and scalable cloud networking architectures, including VPC design, routing, transit networking, private connectivity, and shared services. 

• Develop reusable cloud architecture and infrastructure patterns that can be adopted across teams and environments. 

Automation & Infrastructure as Code 

• Establish standards and patterns for infrastructure as code using technologies such as Terraform and CloudFormation. 

• Design and develop reusable infrastructure modules and automation frameworks. 

• Drive automation of environment provisioning, configuration, governance, and lifecycle management. 

• Identify opportunities to reduce manual operations and improve consistency through automation. 

CI/CD & Platform Enablement 

• Define patterns for integrating cloud infrastructure provisioning into CI/CD and delivery workflows. 

• Establish reliable and repeatable approaches for infrastructure and application deployment. 

• Partner with application and platform teams to enable teams to consume standardized cloud services and infrastructure patterns. 

Identity, Security & Governance 

• Define and implement cloud identity and access patterns using AWS IAM and AWS Identity Center (SSO). 

• Partner with security teams to establish security controls, logging, compliance guardrails, and governance across cloud environments. 

• Ensure cloud architectures follow company standards for security, monitoring, reliability, and governance. 

Hybrid Connectivity & Networking 

• Design connectivity between on-premises data centers, third-party environments, and AWS using Direct Connect, VPN, and other hybrid networking technologies. 

• Define scalable cross-account networking, resource-sharing, and shared-services architectures. 

• Partner with network engineering teams on enterprise connectivity and cloud networking strategy. 

Operations & Reliability 

• Provide technical leadership during complex incidents and infrastructure troubleshooting. 

• Identify systemic reliability and operational issues and drive long-term solutions. 

• Improve platform reliability, scalability, performance, and observability through architecture and automation. 

• Help establish operational standards and best practices across cloud environments. 

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent practical experience. 

• 10+ years of experience in cloud engineering, infrastructure engineering, systems engineering, or related technical roles, with significant experience designing and operating enterprise cloud environments. 

• Demonstrated experience serving as a senior technical lead or architect for large-scale cloud environments. 

• Deep hands-on experience with AWS cloud platforms and services. 

• Extensive experience with large AWS organizations, including AWS Organizations, multi-account architectures, and enterprise governance. 

• Deep understanding of AWS networking, including VPCs, routing, transit architectures, hybrid connectivity, and cross-account networking. 

• Strong experience with infrastructure as code, including Terraform and/or CloudFormation. 

• Experience establishing reusable infrastructure patterns, engineering standards, and automation frameworks. 

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automated infrastructure deployment. 

• Strong knowledge of IAM, identity federation, and AWS Identity Center. 

• Demonstrated ability to lead complex technical initiatives spanning multiple teams and technology domains. 

• Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction, architecture, and engineering standards across an organization. 

• Strong troubleshooting skills with the ability to lead resolution of complex, cross-functional technical problems. 

• Strong communication skills with the ability to communicate technical concepts and recommendations to engineers, architects, and technology leadership. 

• Experience mentoring and providing technical leadership to other engineers. 

• Experience with container platforms, serverless technologies, or cloud-native architectures is a plus. 

• Additional experience with Azure or GCP is a strong plus. 

Additional Information

As part of our selection process, external candidates may be required to attend an in-person interview with a VERSANT Media employee at one of our locations prior to a hiring decision. VERSANT Media's policy is to provide equal employment opportunities to all applicants and employees without regard to race, color, religion, creed, gender, gender identity or expression, age, national origin or ancestry, citizenship, disability, sexual orientation, marital status, pregnancy, veteran status, membership in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.

If you are a qualified individual with a disability or a disabled veteran and require support throughout the application and/or recruitment process as a result of your disability, you have the right to request a reasonable accommodation. You can submit your request to .

VERSANT Media is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. We include a good faith pay range for each position to comply with applicable state and local pay transparency laws and to promote equity across our organization. Actual compensation will be based on factors such as the candidate's skills, qualifications, experience, and location and may include additional forms of compensation and benefits such as health insurance, retirement plans, paid time off, etc.

VERSANT Media is not accepting unsolicited assistance from search firms for this employment opportunity. All resumes submitted by search firms to any employee at VERSANT via-email, the Internet, or in any form and/or method without a valid written Statement of Work in place for this position from VERSANT's Talent Acquisition team will be deemed the sole property of VERSANT. No fee will be paid in the event the candidate is hired by VERSANT as a result of the referral or through other means.