Position Summary
The Director of Platform Services is accountable for the strategy, architecture, governance, financial management, project delivery, operational performance, and continuous improvement of ITT's global platform services, including enterprise cloud and hybrid infrastructure, compute, virtualization, storage, backup and recovery, database platforms, observability, automation, and core shared services as well as end-to-end hosting infrastructure including data center operations, disaster recovery, hypervisor platforms, patching, vulnerability management, and infrastructure-as-code driven automation. This role provides senior leadership for a globally distributed platform function, ensuring secure, resilient, scalable, cost-effective, and well-governed services that enable business operations and digital capabilities across the enterprise.
A primary responsibility of this role is building, developing, and leading a high-performing global organization with teams distributed across the United States, Greece, and India. The Director is responsible for creating an engaged, accountable, and customer-focused culture by attracting, developing, mentoring, and retaining top talent while fostering technical excellence, collaboration, leadership development, and continuous improvement across the organization.
This leader will partner with senior IT leadership, business executives, regional IT teams, cybersecurity, enterprise architecture, application teams, data and analytics, finance, procurement, and strategic vendors to define and execute a multi-year platform services roadmap aligned to ITT's business strategy, growth objectives, risk posture, technology modernization agenda, and global operating model.
Key to this role is establishing the vision, architecture, standards, governance, service levels, financial discipline, talent model, and execution cadence required to operate platform services as a reliable global enterprise capability. The Director will lead operational excellence, platform modernization, automation, observability, resilience engineering, cloud governance, vendor performance, and service transformation while ensuring alignment with business priorities, compliance requirements, cybersecurity expectations, and global architecture standards.
Essential Responsibilities
Strategy & Planning
- Define and lead the global platform services strategy across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments, including platform modernization, data center transformation, resilience, automation, observability, self-service enablement, and service optimization.
- Establish and execute long-term strategic plans for platform technologies, service models, sourcing strategies, investment priorities, reference architectures, and enterprise standards that enable secure, reliable, and efficient technology services.
- Lead operational and strategic planning for the platform services function, including business demand, capacity planning, roadmap prioritization, resource allocation, risk management, financial planning, and service performance management.
- Work with stakeholders to define business and systems requirements for new technology implementations.
- Partner with executive and director-level business and IT stakeholders to align platform services capabilities, priorities, funding, governance, and service levels with enterprise objectives.
- Ensure effective utilization of people, technology, vendor services, automation capabilities, and infrastructure investments across multiple global locations and platform environments.
- Oversee all reports and documentation related to platform services operations.
- Develop global maintenance schedules for platform infrastructure & systems.
- Facilitate system feasibility studies and testing.
- Examine, refine, and develop the existing monitoring and response metrics.
- Establish best practices, governance, service metrics, escalation models, resiliency expectations, and operational controls to support a highly available, secure, observable, and globally distributed 24/7 platform operating environment.
- Develop, implement, and maintain global platform policies, standards, procedures, architecture principles, monitoring and observability practices, service management processes, purchasing guidelines, and vendor governance requirements.
- Lead the enterprise platform project portfolio, including prioritization, governance, resource planning, and successful delivery of platform modernization, cloud, compliance, merger and acquisition, and infrastructure lifecycle initiatives.
Operational Management
- Practice asset management for IT hardware, software, and equipment.
- Lead global workforce planning for platform services, including organizational design, talent development, succession planning, performance management, recruitment, and leadership of employees, contractors, managed service providers, and matrixed technical contributors.
- Ensure change management practices conform to organization-wide standards.
- Establish regular executive communications on platform strategy, service performance, major initiatives, financial performance, risks, incidents, compliance posture, and improvement plans.
- Define and communicate program milestones, service level expectations, performance measures, resource needs, investment decisions, and delivery commitments to executive leadership, business stakeholders, and IT teams.
- Own platform services financial planning, including full accountability for operating and capital budgets, forecasting, cloud and infrastructure cost optimization, chargeback/showback models where applicable, FinOps, capital planning, and alignment to enterprise financial goals.
- Review performance of IT systems to determine operating costs, productivity levels, and upgrade requirements.
- Benchmark, analyze, report on, and make strategic recommendations for improving platform services performance, resilience, cost, security, scalability, automation, standardization, developer experience, and customer experience.
- Develop bid requirements for all hardware and software upgrades, reviews submitted bids for compliance with stated requirements, and makes the appropriate award.
- Authorize and oversee the deployment, monitoring, maintenance, development, and support of all hardware and software based on department needs.
- Develop business case justifications and cost/benefit analyses for IT spending and initiatives.
- Direct research on potential technology solutions and implementations in support of new initiatives, opportunities, and procurement efforts.
- Develop and implement all IT policies and procedures, including those for architecture, security, disaster recovery, standards, purchasing, and service provision.
- Oversee strategic vendor, outsourcer, cloud provider, and consultant relationships, including contract strategy, service performance, commercial governance, escalation management, and value realization.
- Lead talent management and accountability for the platform services organization, including coaching, capability building, performance expectations, leadership development, technical excellence, and a culture of operational ownership and continuous improvement.
Technology Management: Support a geographically diverse global organization utilizing some or all of the following subject matter areas
- Provide strategic direction for platform technologies, tools, services, protocols, standards, and shared capabilities, ensuring the function remains current with market capabilities, business requirements, cybersecurity expectations, and enterprise architecture direction.
- Sponsor and govern improvement, modernization, replacement, and optimization initiatives for platform infrastructure components, shared services, tooling, automation, and related operational services.
- Develop and implement policies, procedures, and associated training for platform resource administration, appropriate use, and disaster recovery
- Create and maintain documentation as it relates to platform configuration, architecture, processes, and service records
- Develop, implement and maintain policies, procedures, and associated training plans for platform administration, usage, and disaster recovery
- Develop managers, engineers, and technical contributors by setting direction, mentoring leaders, building capability, and reinforcing standards for technical excellence and service ownership.
- Lead evaluation and selection of strategic platform technologies, platforms, and solutions to ensure interoperability, scalability, resiliency, security, and alignment with enterprise architecture and business priorities.
Acquisition & Deployment
- Direct the deployment, monitoring, lifecycle management, modernization, and support strategy for platform services, including cloud and hybrid infrastructure, data centers, servers, operating systems, storage, backup, databases, automation, observability, and associated shared services.
- Define and govern global platform short- and long-term strategies to ensure capacity, performance, resiliency, compliance, security, cost efficiency, and scalability meet current and future business requirements.
- Approve and govern technology purchases, renewals, and investments required to meet operational, resiliency, modernization, and business growth requirements.
- Analyze existing platform operations and make recommendations for improving architecture, resilience, automation, service delivery, user experience, cost efficiency, and global standardization.
- Conduct research and remain current with the latest technologies and solutions in support of global infrastructure procurement efforts.
- Develop requests for proposal.
- Lead the platform strategy and execution activities supporting mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, remote site modernization, and enterprise infrastructure transformation initiatives.
Vendor/Solutions Management:
- Responsible for strategic governance of vendors, cloud providers, managed service providers, and technology partners to ensure platform services are integrated, secure, scalable, cost-effective, and aligned with enterprise architecture and business priorities.
- Lead or participate in strategic vendor and commercial negotiations, ensuring agreements support business requirements, service performance, resiliency, security, and cost objectives.
- Engage vendors and solution providers on platform architecture, roadmap alignment, service improvement, technology innovation, and integration planning.
- Hold vendors, cloud providers, and managed service providers accountable for service outcomes, continuous improvement, incident response, operational maturity, security expectations, and contractual commitments.
Position Requirements
Formal Education & Certification
- University degree in computer science, information systems, engineering, business, or a related field; advanced degree preferred. Minimum of 10+ years of progressive IT infrastructure, platform engineering, cloud, or enterprise technology experience, including 5+ years leading global platform, cloud, data center, infrastructure, or shared services teams in a complex enterprise environment.
- Relevant certifications or demonstrated expertise in ITIL, cloud platforms, cybersecurity, enterprise architecture, project/program management, financial management, Lean/Six Sigma, or related disciplines are preferred.
Knowledge & Experience
- Broad enterprise knowledge of global platform technologies, including Windows, Linux & iSeries server platforms, virtualization, cloud services, storage, backup and recovery, patching & vulnerability management, database platforms, disaster recovery, container platforms, monitoring and observability, automation, infrastructure as code, and hybrid operating models.
- Demonstrated experience defining strategy and governance for Azure and hybrid cloud platforms, including landing zones, identity and access patterns, resiliency, security, scalability, automation, cost management, and operational support models across enterprise, manufacturing, and remote site environments.
- Strong technical understanding of enterprise platform architecture, including compute, operating systems, virtualization, cloud infrastructure, storage, backup, databases, automation tooling, observability platforms, security
