Head of IT Infrastructure & Operations, Sr. Director (remote)

Why This Role Matters

At Emergent, our work protects communities and strengthens global health security. As Head of IT Infrastructure & Operations, you will lead the organization’s global technology infrastructure and end-user services. Reporting to the Chief Information Officer, the Senior Director, Head of IT Infrastructure & Operations leads the strategy, engineering, security, reliability, and day-to-day operation of the company’s global technology infrastructure and end-user services. The role is accountable for resilient, secure, compliant, and cost-effective delivery across hybrid cloud, data centers, networks, compute, storage, workplace technology, service management, collaboration, and infrastructure platforms supporting a global 24/7 business and regulated operations. The position modernizes the infrastructure operating model through automation, observability, data-driven service management, and responsible use of AI, while maintaining disciplined lifecycle, continuity, validation, and vendor governance.

What You'll Do

Reasonable accommodations will be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Enterprise leadership and strategy

• Serve as a member of the CIO’s IT Leadership Team and act as the executive owner for enterprise infrastructure and operations capabilities.
• Define and execute a multi-year infrastructure and operations strategy, architecture, investment roadmap, lifecycle plan, and operating model aligned to business priorities, enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, data strategy, and application modernization.
• Translate technology choices into clear business outcomes, risks, service commitments, investment requirements, and decision points for senior leaders.
• Bring an infrastructure, integration, resiliency, and operability perspective to enterprise programs, acquisitions, site changes, and major technology initiatives.

Hybrid cloud, platforms, and architecture

• Lead a fit-for-purpose hybrid cloud strategy spanning public cloud, SaaS, private hosting, and on-premises environments; establish standards for landing zones, connectivity, identity integration, workload placement, scalability, portability, and cost governance.
• Own infrastructure architecture and engineering standards for networks, compute, storage, backup, recovery, databases and middleware where assigned, collaboration, telephony, endpoint and workplace platforms, and core operational tooling.
• Partner with application, data, security, quality, and business teams to ensure platforms are interoperable, supportable, validated where required, and designed for availability, performance, recoverability, and lifecycle sustainability.
• Establish technology currency and technical-debt practices that reduce unsupported platforms, single points of failure, and avoid operational risk.

Operational excellence, service management, and employee experience

• Lead global 24/7 infrastructure operations, service desk, workplace services, major incident management, problem management, change enablement, configuration and asset practices, capacity management, and service continuity.
• Establish service catalogs, service ownership, service level objectives and agreements, operational level agreements, KPIs, experience measures, and executive reporting that connect service performance to business impact.
• Build mature monitoring, observability, event management, and command-center practices to identify degradation early, accelerate restoration, and drive permanent corrective action.
• Continuously improve employee technology experience across offices, laboratories, manufacturing and distribution environments, remote work, and executive support.

Cyber resilience, continuity, and compliance

• Partner with the Chief Information Security Officer and Quality organization to embed secure-by-design, zero-trust, privileged-access, vulnerability, patching, hardening, segmentation, backup protection, recovery, and logging requirements into infrastructure services.
• Own infrastructure disaster recovery and technology continuity capabilities, including business-aligned recovery objectives, dependency mapping, crisis response integration, documented recovery procedures, and regular exercises.
• Ensure infrastructure services meet applicable company policies and regulated-life-sciences requirements, including controlled change, documentation, qualification or validation, data integrity, audit readiness, and evidence retention where required.
• Ensure operational risks, exceptions, and control gaps are visible, assigned, prioritized, and remediated or formally accepted.

Automation, AI-enabled operations, and data

• Develop an automation-first operating model using infrastructure as code, orchestration, self-service, policy as code, automated testing, and repeatable deployment and recovery patterns.
• Adopt AI-enabled operations responsibly to improve event correlation, knowledge retrieval, service desk support, capacity forecasting, anomaly detection, and operational decision support, with appropriate human oversight, security, privacy, records, and compliance controls.
• Create trusted operational data and dashboards that enable trend analysis, predictive insight, cost transparency, risk prioritization, and measurable continual improvement.
• Build workforce capability in cloud, automation, AI, cybersecurity, service reliability, and modern engineering practices.

Financial, supplier, and talent leadership

• Own infrastructure and operations financial planning, forecasting, cloud financial management, contract optimization, and investment prioritization.
• Lead strategic sourcing activities, including RFPs, RFIs, SOWs, contract and service-level negotiations, supplier performance, concentration risk, exit planning, and third-party resilience.
• Lead, develop, and retain a diverse global team; clarify accountabilities, succession, cross-training, on-call expectations, and skills plans across employees, managed service providers, and specialist partners.
• Create a culture of ownership, disciplined execution, transparency, collaboration, learning, and continuous improvement.

The above statements describe the general nature of work performed in this job. They are not an exhaustive list of duties, and other duties may be assigned.

What You Bring

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, information systems, business, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience. Advanced degree is preferred.
• Typically 15+ years of progressive technology experience, including 7+ years leading multiple infrastructure, operations, engineering, or service delivery teams in a complex global enterprise.
• Demonstrated success leading enterprise-wide infrastructure transformation and operating-model change in a highly regulated environment; life-sciences, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or manufacturing experience is strongly preferred.
• Demonstrated accountability for global, business-critical, 24/7 services delivered through a mix of internal teams, public cloud, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, colocation, telecommunications, managed services, and outsourcing partners.

Required Skills and Abilities

• Executive leadership, business acumen, financial stewardship, and the ability to communicate complex technology choices as business value, risk, resilience, cost, and employee impact.
• Deep working knowledge of hybrid cloud, enterprise networking, compute, storage, backup and recovery, identity dependencies, endpoint and workplace technology, collaboration, telephony, monitoring, observability, and service management.
• Experience with modern engineering and operations practices, including automation, infrastructure as code, configuration management, APIs, DevSecOps, site reliability concepts, capacity engineering, and technology lifecycle management.
• Ability to establish metrics and use operational, experience, risk, and financial data to prioritize work and demonstrate outcomes.
• Strong knowledge of cybersecurity infrastructure controls and close partnership with security teams on zero trust, segmentation, vulnerability and patch management, privileged access, secure configuration, logging, resilience, and incident response.
• Experience designing, testing, and improving business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities across complex application and infrastructure dependencies.
• Knowledge of cGMP expectations and experience supporting validated or qualified technology in regulated life-sciences environments, including change control, documentation, data integrity, and audit readiness.
• Experience governing AI-enabled operational use cases with appropriate controls for security, privacy, compliance, transparency, reliability, and human oversight.
• Proven ability to lead in a matrixed environment, build coalitions, influence executives, negotiate with suppliers, and manage competing priorities during incidents and transformation.
• Strong talent leadership, coaching, succession planning, organizational design, sourcing strategy, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Excellent written, verbal, presentation, and executive influencing skills.

Preferred Knowledge and Credentials

• Familiarity with ITIL practices and modern service management; relevant ITIL certification is preferred.
• Familiarity with cloud architecture and financial management practices; relevant cloud or FinOps credentials are preferred.
• Familiarity with recognized cybersecurity, resilience, and control frameworks used by the company.
• Experience supporting ERP, laboratory, manufacturing, quality, and data platforms with demanding availability, integration, and compliance requirements.