James Salmon
Stoke-on-Trent
Summary
Results-driven Service Operations and Infrastructure leader with extensive experience directing global SRE, cloud engineering, and security teams across internal enterprise IT and multi-tenant SaaS environments. Proven track record executing enterprise FinOps frameworks, deploying secure corporate AI governance, and ensuring technical alignment with ISO27001, NIST, and FDA standards. Highly adept at balancing commercial objectives, business continuity, and scalable technology platforms across diverse organizational setups.
Overview
1
1
Certification
18
18
years of professional experience
Work History
Service Operations Engineering Manager
Flooid Ltd
Birmingham
03.2025 - Current
- Global SaaS Platform Reliability: Oversee the availability, performance, and network architecture of a multi-tenant Google Cloud Platform (GCP) infrastructure—utilizing Compute Engine and Kubernetes (GKE)—to support business-critical SaaS products for tier-one global retailers, including Tesco, Dollar General, and Primark.
- Enterprise AI Strategy & Governance: Formulated the corporate framework, compliance policies, and governance models to safely enable company-wide AI adoption; directed the rollout of Microsoft Copilot, Atlassian Rovo (Jira), and Cursor across both engineering and service management teams to automate incident workflows, accelerate development pipelines, and enhance operational visibility.
- FinOps Practices & Cloud Optimisation: Designed and embedded robust FinOps practices across SaaS product infrastructure, creating visibility into multi-tenant cloud consumption and driving targeted cost-efficiency initiatives.
- Operational Process Transformation: Re-engineered and implemented modernized corporate Change Management and Incident Management workflows, strengthening system stability, reducing MTTR, and ensuring continuous operational compliance with ISO27001 standards.
Global Head of Infrastructure and DevOps
Genus PLC
Nantwich
07.2023 - 03.2025
- Strategic Leadership & Departmental Governance: Direct and mentor a cross-functional department of 25 professionals—including 4 Team Leads—spanning Infrastructure, Security, Database Administration (DBA), and Systems & Integrations teams.
- Financial Ownership & Vendor Management: Retain full accountability for a £3.5m annual budget, managing strategic relationships, contract negotiations, and SLAs with tier-one vendors to maximize ROI across the infrastructure footprint.
- Agile Governance & CI/CD Policy: Partner with SAFe/Agile-aligned teams to establish enterprise governance, release management frameworks, change control policies, and standardized CI/CD engineering practices.
- Enterprise Platform & Cloud Oversight: Oversee the availability, security, and lifecycle management of core enterprise platforms, including multi-cloud environments (Azure/AWS), Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and core virtualization stacks.
- Executive Compliance & Audit Governance: Govern enterprise-wide technical compliance frameworks, ensuring continuous infrastructure alignment with ISO27001 and NIST standards while securing auditability validation for stringent FDA approval processes.
- Corporate Resilience & Business Continuity: Collaborate with executive stakeholders to align global IT capabilities and Disaster Recovery frameworks with corporate Business Continuity (BC) and risk management strategies.
Global IT Infrastructure & Security Manager
Genus PLC
Nantwich
01.2022 - 07.2023
- Global Infrastructure & Budgetary Governance: Maintained end-to-end operational accountability for global multi-cloud (Azure/AWS) and hybrid on-premises infrastructure, supporting 3,000+ users across 65 international locations under a unified £2.7m annual budget.
- Operational Modernisation & Follow-the-Sun Support: Restructured a geographically dispersed team of 12 (including 2 Team Leads) across AMER, APAC, and EMEA to transition operations from a legacy 9-5 model to a high-availability 24x5 global support matrix, significantly improving incident response times.
- Enterprise Security Posture & Compliance: Spearheaded global initiatives; including SIEM/SOAR deployment, Network Access Control, network segmentation whilst adhering to ISO27001, Cyber Essentials, and NIST frameworks. Engineered rigorous auditability workflows to satisfy FDA approval processes and advanced the infrastructure to Zero Trust Architecture.
- Global Network & Cloud Transformation Execution: Successfully delivered complex large-scale projects, including a multi-site ADVPN rollout utilising FortiGate firewalls across 60+ locations and executing complex 'Azure Migrate' initiatives to re-architect legacy services into cloud-native solutions.
- Business Resilience & Vendor Management: Partnered with business stakeholders to align IT recovery capabilities with enterprise Business Continuity (BC) requirements; engineered, tested and maintained the underlying technical Disaster Recovery (DR) frameworks to guarantee minimal downtime and data loss for critical operations.
Cloud Operations Lead
Genus PLC
Nantwich
07.2020 - 01.2022
- Global Cloud Infrastructure Leadership: Served as the global technical authority for multi-cloud infrastructure (Azure/AWS), establishing governance, security baselines, and architectural design patterns for all enterprise landing zones. Accountable for an annual £1.2m budget within Azure and AWS.
- Global Cloud Transformation: Initiated and spearheaded a multi-site cloud migration strategy, leading a team of 5 engineers to transition 400+ legacy servers across international sites into cloud-native Azure architectures, improving scalability and eliminating physical infrastructure footprints.
- FinOps Implementation & High-Impact Savings: Designed and executed a FinOps strategy. Utilising reservation discounts, right-sizing, resource tagging, lifecycle policies, successfully delivering £900k in annualised cost reductions.
Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Boeing Defence UK Ltd
Stafford
05.2017 - 06.2020
- Public Sector Project Delivery: Deployed a £10m Record Management System (NicheRMS) for Staffordshire Police and delivered critical infrastructure transformation projects supporting the Ministry of Defence and public services.
- Infrastructure Operations: Managed high-availability enterprise environments, maintaining daily operational responsibility for Hyper-V and VMware virtualization clusters, SQL Server HA clusters, and Citrix XenApp/XenDesktop environments.
Various Positions
Various
02.2008 - 05.2017
- Worked through various companies in different positions, such as IT Service Lead at Well Pharmacy, Data Entry Mentor/Keyer at Royal Mail and Customer Service/Technical Support at OverclockersUK.
Education
Chemistry MSc -
Keele University
KeeleNatural Sciences BSc -
Open University
Skills
Strategic & Operational Leadership
- FinOps Strategy & Cost Optimisation
- Strategic Leadership & Team Governance (Multi-site/Cross-functional)
- Vendor & Supplier Management (SLA & Contract Negotiation)
- Budgetary Accountability & Financial Governance
- Incident & Change Management (ITIL/SRE Alignment)
- Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery (DR) Ownership
- SAFe / Agile Methodologies
- Information Security Governance
- ISO27001 Compliance & Auditing
- NIST Cybersecurity Framework
- Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA)
- FDA Compliance & System Auditability
- Multi-Cloud Architecture (GCP, Azure, AWS)
- Google Cloud Platform (Compute Engine, GKE, Networking)
- Site Reliability Engineering (SRE)
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) (Terraform, Ansible)
- Enterprise AI Adoption & Governance (Microsoft Copilot, Atlassian Rovo, Cursor)
- CI/CD Pipeline Design & Implementation
- Virtualisation Stack Management (VMware, Hyper-V)
Certification
- Azure Administrator
- Azure Fundamentals
- Terraform Associate
Custom
- Investing
- Worldbuilding
- Rugby
- Gaming
Timeline
Service Operations Engineering Manager
Flooid Ltd
03.2025 - Current
Global Head of Infrastructure and DevOps
Genus PLC
07.2023 - 03.2025
Global IT Infrastructure & Security Manager
Genus PLC
01.2022 - 07.2023
Cloud Operations Lead
Genus PLC
07.2020 - 01.2022
Senior Infrastructure Engineer
Boeing Defence UK Ltd
05.2017 - 06.2020
Various Positions
Various
02.2008 - 05.2017
Chemistry MSc -
Keele University
Natural Sciences BSc -
Open University