Job Description
The Senior Director of Application Infrastructure provides strategic and operational leadership for the university's enterprise application infrastructure ecosystem, including enterprise database and application administration, integration services, web hosting, disaster recovery testing, and supporting platforms that enable mission-critical administrative, academic, research, and engagement functions.
Reporting to the AVP for Enterprise Solutions and Enabling Technologies (ESET), the Senior Director serves as a member of the ESET leadership team and is accountable for the long-term health, sustainability, security, performance, and strategic evolution of enterprise application delivery platforms and the infrastructure services that support them. The role provides direction to managers and technical teams while ensuring alignment between institutional priorities, enterprise architecture, governance frameworks, and operational execution.
Success in this role requires balancing strategic vision with operational excellence, fostering strong partnerships with executive stakeholders, distributed IT leaders, and vendors, while ensuring enterprise platforms remain resilient, scalable, secure, and adaptable to evolving university needs.
Work Location
This is a hybrid position. The successful candidate may work onsite at the Blacksburg campus approximately 2-3 days per week. As a senior director-level role, regular onsite presence is essential to support team leadership, collaboration, planning, and relationship-building efforts.
Required Qualifications
• Master's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.
• Significant experience leading enterprise application, database administration, application administration, or related infrastructure services in large, complex organizations.
• Demonstrated success leading managers and technical teams with accountability for operational outcomes and strategic initiatives.
• Experience supporting mission-critical enterprise platforms requiring high availability, reliability, security, and regulatory compliance.
• Proven ability to lead enterprise-scale technology initiatives in highly matrixed organizations.
• Experience partnering effectively with executive stakeholders and leading through influence.
• Experience managing budgets, vendors, and cross-functional initiatives.
• Strong understanding of enterprise applications, databases, integrations, service management, and operational excellence practices.
• Exceptional strategic thinking, communication, organizational leadership, and change management skills.
• Experience in higher education or another complex, highly regulated institutional environment.
Preferred Qualifications
• Experience supporting ERP, CRM, student systems, research administration systems, or other enterprise administrative platforms.
• Experience with AI, cloud, hybrid cloud, and modern application platform architectures.
• Experience operating within formal governance, cybersecurity, compliance, and audit frameworks.
• Demonstrated success leading digital transformation, application modernization, or enterprise service evolution initiatives.
• Experience improving operational maturity through automation, service management practices, and platform standardization.
• Familiarity with enterprise integration platforms, API management, middleware technologies, and data integration architectures.
Overtime Status
Exempt: Not eligible for overtime
Appointment Type
Regular
Salary Information
$162,500 - $182,450
Hours per week
40
Review Date
09/23/2026
Additional Information
Sponsorship is not available for this role.
The successful candidate will be required to have a criminal conviction check.
