The Role
The Director of Infrastructure & IT Operations provides strategic leadership and operational oversight for the organization's enterprise cloud, network, and helpdesk ecosystems. This pivotal role is responsible for establishing the technology roadmap, managing multi-million dollar capital budgets, and ensuring that foundational IT services align with overarching business growth and security requirements.

Unlike execution-focused administrator roles, this position centers on driving digital transformation, managing strategic vendor partnerships, cultivating high-performing engineering teams, and guaranteeing enterprise-wide service availability and resilience.

Primary Responsibilities
Platform Administration & Support
● Strategic Oversight: Direct the availability, lifecycle, and modernization of all global cloud environments, systems, and network platforms.
● Governance & Standards: Establish corporate ITIL frameworks, disaster recovery strategies, and business continuity plans to minimize enterprise risk.
● Incident Escalation: Act as the ultimate authority for major critical incident response, ensuring rapid recovery and thorough post-mortem root-cause reviews.
● Capacity Planning: Forecast enterprise compute, storage, and licensing needs to ensure scalable infrastructure ahead of corporate growth.

Vendor & Service Delivery Management
● Contract Negotiation: Manage enterprise agreements and high-value partnerships with major cloud providers, hardware OEMs, and telecom carriers.
● Strategic Auditing: Review top-tier MSP and vendor performance against global Operational Level Agreements (OLAs) and service metrics.

Leadership & Stakeholder Engagement
● Executive Advisory: Partner directly with the C-suite and business executives to align infrastructure investments with organizational KPIs.
● Talent Cultivation: Lead, mentor, and build accountability within internal engineering, DevOps, and technical support leadership teams.

Stakeholder Communication & Leadership
● Vision Alignment: Translate technical infrastructure roadmaps into clear, value-driven business strategies for non-technical board members.
● Steering Committees: Chair regular cross-functional leadership meetings to coordinate enterprise maintenance schedules and tech deployments.

Collaboration & Communication
● Enterprise Unity: Collaborate closely with Cybersecurity and Software Engineering divisions to champion a unified, secure-by-design technological footprint.

Qualifications
● 8+ years of progressive IT leadership experience overseeing enterprise infrastructure, operations, and 24/7 production environments.
● Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field (or MBA/equivalent executive experience preferred).
● Strong expertise in hybrid cloud environments (AWS/Azure), enterprise networking, DevOps practices, and large-scale infrastructure architecture.
● Proven experience managing infrastructure budgets (CapEx/OpEx), optimizing costs, and leading vendor negotiations.
● Experience serving as an escalation point for major enterprise outages, incident response, and critical operational events.
● Strong understanding of enterprise compliance frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, and PCI-DSS.
● Excellent communication and leadership skills with the ability to influence technical teams, business stakeholders, and executive leadership.
● Crisis management experience with the ability to lead organizations through high-impact technical incidents and operational disruptions.
● Collaborative leader with a strong focus on aligning infrastructure strategy across business units and breaking down operational silos.
● Experience with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is preferred.
● Exposure to SAP RISE and/or SAP BASIS infrastructure is highly desirable.
● Network design and network management experience is preferred.
● Security experience is a plus but not required.
● Ability to manage competing priorities across strategic infrastructure initiatives and day-to-day operational demands.
● Experience working across cloud, SAP, and enterprise network environments is a strong plus