Director of Infrastructure & Enterprise Application

Company Description 

The Director of Infrastructure and Enterprise Application Engineering, is responsible for the management of on-premise/co-located infrastructure and engineering, enterprise application engineering, and Identity and Access Management/Active Directory engineering within Empyrean’s hybrid infrastructure environment. This pivotal role involves not only defining and executing strategic initiatives but also overseeing day-to-day operations. 

ESSENTIAL DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead and mentor a team of infrastructure and enterprise application engineers fostering a collaborative and innovative work environment.
• Define the strategic direction and roadmap for infrastructure initiatives, offering guidance for the 12–36-month range and establishing portfolio priorities, focusing on cost-effective, reliable, and secure solutions delivered through standardized and automated processes.
• Oversee day-to-day operations of the on-premises infrastructure, including monitoring, incident response, patching, currency updates, capacity planning, and performance optimization.
• Leverage enterprise tools and processes to maintain consistent unified infrastructure management practices across the hybrid infrastructure environment.
• Advance Microsoft O365 strategy and roadmap to maximize organizational benefits and productivity gains.
• Drive initiatives to enhance functionality, usability, and integration of enterprise applications, including Microsoft O365, Confluence, Jira and Jira Big Picture.
• Have an understanding of developing comprehensive strategy for IAM and AD engineering, focusing on security and compliance.
• Design, deploy, and manage solutions using industry best practices to ensure high availability, security, performance, reliability, resiliency, and scalability.
• Promote an "automation-first" culture within the team and drive automation initiatives to streamline provisioning, deployment, configuration management, and monitoring processes.
• Identify opportunities for process enhancements, cost savings, and performance optimization, and lead initiatives to implement improvements.
• Collaborate with other teams, including development, devops, site reliability engineering, data operations, cloud engineering teams, and operations, to ensure seamless integration of supported technologies with other systems.
• Serve as an escalation point for applicable enterprise issues and incidents, including outside normal business hours if required. Participates in incident response and lead resolution efforts as needed.
• Takes a lead role in orchestrating disaster recovery and business continuity plans, collaborating with cross-functional teams to assess risks, establish recovery objectives, and execute response strategies.
• Partner with leadership in the preparation of the department’s budget. Demonstrate strong financial acumen and portfolio management skills to manage and optimize investments.
• Collaborate with service providers, the Procurement and Vendor Management team, and other internal teams to negotiate contracts, optimize costs, and stay up to date with the latest offerings and trends.
• Lead and support offshore teams, optimizing resource utilization and alignment with project objectives to ensure successful project delivery and collaboration
• Act as a champion for the organization's ITIL processes, advocating for their adoption and effective implementation across all relevant areas
• Build strong relationships with various stakeholders across the company and foster a culture of collaboration and communication on projects
• Foster a culture of continuous learning and growth by developing technical skill ladders to upskill team members, while also ensuring their motivation, engagement, and empowerment to excel in their roles

REQUIRED SKILLS AND ABILITIES  

• Strong ability to define and execute IT infrastructure and enterprise application engineering strategies.
• Expertise in data center management and the ability to be on site at the data centers if required.
• Strong technical proficiency in on-premises infrastructure management, as well as enterprise applications engineering and technologies.
• Understanding and managing Active Directory (AD) infrastructure - Domain controller servers. Synchronization with Microsoft Entra ID.
• Adept with continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) tools such as Jenkins, GitHub CI/CD, or Azure DevOps.
• Adept with infrastructure as code (IaC) concepts and tools like Terraform or AWS CloudFormation.
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to troubleshoot complex technical issues.
• Strong project management skills.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, particularly adept in documentation, paired with excellent stakeholder management abilities.

KNOWLEDGE, EXPERIENCE AND/OR EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field
  • In lieu of Bachelor’s degree, equivalent years of experience in computer science, engineering, benefits administration, or a related field 
• Strategic leadership experience with a proven track record of successfully leading large-scale IT initiatives and driving organizational change.
• Overall, 10+ years of experience in related areas of work
• 6-8 years of experience in the following areas: 
  • Windows Server and Linux operating systems
  • Virtualization technologies such as VMware or Hyper-V
  • Storage solutions like SAN/NAS systems and storage area networks
  • Network infrastructure components, including routers, switches, firewalls, and load balancers
  • Telecommunications systems and protocols
  • Contact center technologies and AI support systems
  • Microsoft O365 suite, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Teams.
  • Email archival systems and related compliance requirements
• Extensive background with on-premise/co-location infrastructure management.
• Advanced experience with security tools and protocols that protect the network and computing environment including Web Access Firewalls, Privileged Access Management, Identity Access Management, SAML, SSO, etc.
• Advanced knowledge of performance monitoring and log aggregation, with proficiency in monitoring and alerting tools such as ELK stack, Solarwinds, Datadog, Zabbix, and/or Prometheus.
• Experience in provisioning infrastructure using infrastructure as code (IaC) automation tools such as Terraform or AWS CloudFormation, to manage and maintain compute and network components of the environment.
• Some experience supporting and managing on-prem instances of Atlassian Datacenter, Confluence and Jira
• Understanding of software development lifecycle (SDLC) management tools and methodologies.
• Experience with automation tools like Ansible, Puppet, or Chef for configuration management.
• Familiarity with public cloud providers such as AWS or MS Azure, or an at scale self-hosted solution such as OpenStack or VMWare.
• Familiarity with security best practices and tools for securing both infrastructure and applications, alongside understanding of security compliance frameworks such as NIST, ISO 27001, or SOC 2
• Some experience with managing third-party engineering resources (on-shore | near-shore | off-shore)
• Strong analytical skills 
• Proven ability to meet deadlines and work effectively in a multi-tasking environment
• Relevant certifications or vendor-specific certifications are advantageous.
• Prior experience in a SaaS provider or benefit program administration organization a plus. 

Disclaimer: Managers have the right to assign or redesign the responsibilities of the above mentioned job description without notice and at any time