Director, Engineering (Public Cloud Infrastructure)

Paylocity is an award-winning provider of cloud-based HR and payroll software solutions, offering the most complete platform for the modern workforce. The company has become one of the fastest-growing HCM software providers worldwide by offering an intuitive, easy-to-use product suite that helps businesses automate and streamline HR and payroll processes, attract and retain talent, and build a strong workplace culture.  

While traditional HR and payroll providers automate basic HR processes such as payroll and benefits administration, Paylocity goes further by developing tools that HR and businesses need to compete for talent and deliver against the expectations of the modern workforce. 

We give our employees what they need to succeed, including great benefits and perks! We offer medical, dental, vision, life, disability, and a 401(k) match, as well as perks that support you, your family, and your finances. And if it’s career development you desire, we provide that, too! At Paylocity, people matter most and have always been at the heart of our business.  

Help Paylocity enhance communication and enable employees to connect, collaborate, and create from anywhere with a position in Product & Technology! 

Want to develop the strategies and principles needed to deliver compelling software.  Join our team and help us enhance our all-in-one software platform, elevate our one-of-a-kind technology, and improve the employee experience.  

Take your career to the next level at one of G2's Top 100 Software Companies. Explore our Product & Technology positions to see where you fit! 

This is a fully remote position, allowing you to work from home or location of record within the U.S. with no in-office requirements. You must be available five days per week during designated work hours. The work arrangement for this role is subject to change based on business needs and individual performance. This may include adjustments to on-site requirements or schedule expectations, as necessary. 

This role requires a technical leader with a strategic mindset, dedicated to delivering scalable, high-quality solutions that meet the needs of our internal application teams and customers across core services powering our Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions. This role will be responsible for leading multiple cloud infrastructure engineering teams, focused on designing infrastructure systems and standards, and/or building and maintaining shared components. You will drive best practices in cloud infrastructure, and ensure efficient execution of the technology roadmap, while working closely with engineering, product management, and business stakeholders in corporate development and procurement to support innovation, scalability, and customer impact. 

The below represents the primary duties of the position, others may be assigned as needed. To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. 

Primary Responsibilities: 

• Lead and evolve the company-wide Cloud and Infrastructure strategy, in collaboration with senior leaders and key cross-functional business stakeholders.
• Ensure the value proposition of Cloud technology is clearly articulated and balanced within Paylocity's broader Hybrid Cloud strategy, including public cloud, private cloud, virtualization, and on-premises infrastructure.
• Define architecture standards and technical roadmaps that leverage the right mix of cloud-native, containerized, virtualized, and bare-metal solutions based on business, operational, and financial requirements.
• Drive the adoption of containers and cloud-native architectures where appropriate, while ensuring workloads are deployed on the most effective platform, including Kubernetes, virtualized infrastructure, and traditional compute environments.
• Provide technical leadership for enterprise virtualization platforms and hybrid infrastructure capabilities, ensuring the organization can successfully operate and scale workloads both within and outside AWS.
• Collaborate with Business Development to support M&A research, technology due diligence, platform assessments, and integration strategies.
• Organize and manage Platform and Infrastructure Engineering teams to maximize efficiency, ensuring resource allocation aligns with budget constraints and business goals.
• Lead Incident Response and management efforts for your teams, ensuring adherence to process, optimizing MTTD and MTTR, leading postmortem efforts.
• Foster a culture of innovation, collaboration, continuous improvement, accountability, and operational excellence within the Infrastructure and Cloud organizations.
• Lead the execution of complex infrastructure modernization and platform engineering initiatives, ensuring quality, scalability, resilience, and timely delivery.
• In partnership with Finance, Product, and Engineering, mature and refine our FinOps practice to ensure infrastructure costs are optimized and aligned with customer value across public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises environments.
• Stay informed on industry trends and emerging technologies across cloud computing, virtualization, platform engineering, automation, and infrastructure operations.
• Ensure adherence to Paylocity security standards, compliance frameworks, resilience objectives, and regulatory requirements.

Education and Experience 

• BS degree or higher in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience in the SaaS software industry operating and scaling solutions across public cloud, private cloud, and enterprise infrastructure environments. Human Capital Management domain experience preferred but not required.
• 5+ years of experience leading multiple engineering teams in a high-growth, enterprise-scale, or highly regulated environment.
• Hands-on experience with AWS (or another major cloud provider) and a strong understanding of hybrid cloud architectures integrating public cloud, on-premises infrastructure, virtualization platforms, and bare-metal environments.
• Hands on experience deploying, managing and maintaining operating system platforms within enterprise virtualization technologies, specifically Windows Server / Linux on VMware vSphere, Nutanix, Hyper-V, KVM, OpenShift Virtualization, or equivalent), with the ability to architect and operate virtualized infrastructure independent of AWS-native services.
• Demonstrated experience successfully driving platform maturity through consolidation, modernization, migration, standardization, and infrastructure optimization initiatives.
• Experience translating the AWS Well-Architected Framework and broader infrastructure architecture principles into actionable technology roadmaps.
• Experience leading and growing teams that build and manage infrastructure using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Ansible, Terraform, CDK, CloudFormation, or equivalent automation frameworks.
• Experience with observability and monitoring platforms such as Datadog, Grafana, Prometheus, and related operational tooling.
• Deep experience leading teams that operate large-scale containerized platforms orchestrated by Kubernetes, including workload placement across cloud and non-cloud environments.
• Proven ability to lead, mentor, and grow high-performing teams, with a strong focus on talent development, succession planning, inclusion, and organizational effectiveness.
• Strong business acumen with the ability to balance strategic vision, operational execution, financial stewardship, and customer outcomes.
• A proven track record of defining technology and business goals and successfully executing against them to drive measurable business value.
• Strong decision-making, prioritization, and collaboration skills, with a leadership style centered on shared ownership and team success.
• Expert-level understanding of modern architecture patterns, infrastructure platforms, engineering frameworks, operational best practices, and scalable technology organizations.
• Demonstrated success leading integration efforts, platform operations, 24x7 production environments, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Detail-oriented, organized, self-sufficient, and capable of finding creative solutions across business, product, platform, and organizational challenges.
• Excellent executive communication and stakeholder management skills, including experience presenting to and influencing executive leadership teams.

Paylocity is an equal-opportunity employer. Paylocity is committed to the full inclusion of all individuals. We recruit, train, compensate, and promote regardless of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, disability, age, veteran status, and other protected status as required by applicable law. At Paylocity, we believe diversity makes us better.   

We embrace and encourage our employees’ differences in age, culture, ethnicity, family or marital status, gender identity or expression, language, national origin, physical and mental ability, political affiliation, race, religion or spiritual belief, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, veteran status, and other characteristics that make our employees unique. We actively cultivate these differences through our employee resource groups (ERGs), employee experiences, perspectives, talents, and approaches to drive innovation in the software and services we provide our customers.  

We comply with federal and state disability laws and make reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. To request reasonable accommodation in the job application or interview process, please contact accessibility@paylocity.com. This email address is exclusively designated for such requests, aligning with federal and state disability laws. Please do not send resumes to this email address, as they will be removed. 

The base pay range for this position is $230,000 - $240,000 /yr; however, base pay offered may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. This position is eligible for an annual bonus and restricted stock unit grant based on individual performance in addition to a full range of benefits outlined here. This information is provided per the relevant state and local pay transparency laws for the location in which this position will be performed. Base pay information is based on market location. Applicants should apply via www.paylocity.com/careers.