Position Summary
This Director of Global IT Infrastructure role is responsible to provide strategic leadership and direction to ensure the smooth operation and continuous improvement of the company global infrastructure, including cybersecurity, other security, cloud integrations and transformation, networks, servers, storage, user computers, and enterprise data and applications. This role requires strong technical expertise, exceptional managerial skills, and the ability to collaborate with various teams to achieve organizational objectives. This role will lead all the infrastructure teams in all global locations to ensure a stable and secure IT systems for this fast-growing manufacturing group of companies. A critical element of this role is the responsibility for the budget planning and execution to that budget, as a fiscally responsible IT organization.
This director must align with the business leaders across the organization, to understand current and forward-looking opportunities, to support the business application vision and roadmap. This must include active portfolio management, setting priorities and aligning managers and staff within IT to meet those demands. Alignment and collaboration with the Global IT Application Director is key to ensure optimum delivery of services to the boarder business, ensuring safety of applications in data and cyber protections. Additionally, analysis of potential M&A targets along with integration planning is necessary in this role, as is critical input to budgeting and capex planning, and later execution of those plans.
Essential Functions
- Develop and implement a comprehensive infrastructure strategy aligned with business goals, ensuring scalability, reliability, and security.
- Collaborate with other IT Directors and managers, and contribute to the overall IT strategic planning process aligned to company goals and objectives, including fostering innovation, planning projects, along with organizing and negotiating the allocation of resources.
- Manage, update, and oversee the application project portfolio and project management execution, collaborating with business leaders to ensure alignment to drive the business forward.
- Lead and oversee IT projects, ensuring they are completed on time, within budget, and meet quality standards.
- Responsible for the hiring, building, and maintaining a professional IT team, setting stretch performance goals and monitoring effectiveness throughout the year.
- Lead and manage a multi-location team of infrastructure and support professionals, providing guidance, coaching, and performance evaluations.
- Manage an effective team in the support of day-to-day operations of business systems, working collaboratively with all managers, to ensure business operations are maintained and run properly.
- Oversee new design, deployment, and maintenance of network infrastructure, including LAN, WAN, routers, switches, firewalls, and VPNs.
- Manage the operation and maintenance of servers, storage systems, and virtualization platforms, ensuring maximum uptime and optimal performance, on a hybrid infrastructure environment.
- Develop and implement disaster recovery and business continuity plans to minimize downtime and data loss.
- Manage integrations and data center movements, for excellence and minimal downtime.
- Monitor and analyze infrastructure performance, identifying areas for improvement and implementing appropriate solutions.
- Stay up-to-date with industry trends and emerging technologies, evaluating their potential impact on the organization and recommending relevant upgrades or enhancements.
- Establish and maintain relationships with vendors, negotiating contracts and ensuring service level agreements are met.
- Manage infrastructure budgets, ensuring cost-effective utilization of resources and adherence to financial targets.
- Manage the process and protocol with the Cybersecurity team on implementing all technical solutions to ensure the IT system is well protected with needed security solutions and tools, and is in compliance with ISO27001 and NIST standards.
- Identify and address potential cybersecurity and other risks enacting measures to protect the organization's data and systems.
- Work with application team leaders on software project planning, and provide needed infrastructure resources and plan.
- Conduct annual IT audits and work with external security firms on infrastructure security penetration testing, and come up with improvement plans.
- Ensure compliance with relevant regulations and industry best practices related to infrastructure management, data security, and privacy.
- Develop business case justifications and cost/benefit analyses for IT spending and initiatives.
- Establish and enforce IT policies and procedures to ensure compliance with industry standards and regulations.
- Monitor to ensure compliance by IT staff in all change management requests and activities to ensure business needs are met, and risk mitigations are in place as part of the process.
- Keep current on industry and technology landscape to lead the company and its business customers to understand their technology options.
- Collaborate with the Director of Applications to ensure availability, reliability, and security of the business applications and data within it.
- Manage all financial aspects of the IT Infrastructure group, in the budget planning, and daily management of the spend related to software, services, consulting and other related areas to support the business.
Minimum Education And Expereince
- BS/BA in Computer Science or Information Technology, or related work experience.
- Minimum 12 years relevant experience in Information Technology as a director or manager, with increasing responsibilities along the career path in IT.
- Experience as a Director or Manager of Infrastructure, specifically in generally >$1B manufacturing enterprises with a global footprint.
- Manufacturing industry experience is required.
- Over 8 years of experience in managing technical teams across various domains, encompassing network infrastructure, virtual and physical server farms, operating systems, server administration, IT support, and Voice systems.
- Having a background in multiple aspects of infrastructure (server, network, desktop, cyber security, both on-prem and in the cloud) would be necessary and useful in this position, as well as strategic planning and execution of the same.
- M&A planning and execution is preferred.
- Robust technical knowledge and hands-on experience in overseeing enterprise-level infrastructure systems, including MPLS network and SD-WAN infrastructure. Proficiency in collaborating with tier 1 MPLS providers is essential.
- Previous experience managing a Microsoft product team responsible for Windows, Office 365 setup and maintenance, as well as overseeing all Windows servers and endpoint computer maintenance and updates.
- Hands-on experience managing the setup and maintenance of on-premises and cloud infrastructure including virtualization and cloud platforms/
- Strong knowledge of storage systems (SAN, NAS) and backup/recovery solutions.
- Familiarity with the ITIL framework and project management methodologies is highly advantageous.
- Applications and ERP Systems familiarity is required, preferably Oracle eBusiness ERP
- Proven experience in leading and managing a team of infrastructure professionals, fostering a positive work environment, and promoting professional growth.
- Experience with IT technologies and business processes for a manufacturing and distribution company.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, to interact professionally and in business language with all levels of business leaders and subject matter experts.
- Automotive aftermarket and remanufacturing experience desirable.
