Director, Infrastructure Engineering

KeHE Distributors, LLC; Naperville (IL); On-site; USD 157,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health/Rx

Dental

Vision

FSA/HSA

Supplemental life insurance

401(k)

Paid time off

Paid sick time

STD/LTD

ESOP

Holiday pay

Job summary

KeHE Distributors, LLC is seeking a Director of Infrastructure Engineering in Naperville, IL to lead modernization of our infrastructure, cloud migration, and automation efforts. This hands-on leader will drive an IaC culture, define roadmaps, and partner with security and application teams to deliver secure, scalable infrastructure.

The role requires 10+ years in infrastructure/ platform engineering with 5+ years in leadership, and extensive experience across AWS and Azure.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience.
• 10+ years of progressive experience in infrastructure/platform engineering.
• 5+ years in a leadership role.
• Experience migrating infrastructure to Azure/AWS and implementing modern practices.

Responsibilities

• Lead multi‑year strategy for a modern Infrastructure Engineering organization across networking and compute.
• Drive Infrastructure as Code, automation, and security‑first culture.
• Oversee cloud engineering across AWS and Azure, including governance and optimization.
• Partner with security, data, and applications teams to ensure secure cloud adoption.
• Develop metrics, KPIs, and executive reporting to track progress.

Skills

Infrastructure leadership

Cloud engineering

AWS

Azure

IaC

Security

Automation

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

Bicep/ARM

Ansible

PowerShell

Kubernetes

VMware

Hyper-V

Job description

Why Work for KeHE?

• Full-time
• Pay Range: $156,640.00/Yr. - $229,598.00/Yr.
• Shift Days: , Shift Time:
• Benefits on Day 1
  • Health/Rx
  • Dental
  • Vision
  • Flexible and health spending accounts (FSA/HSA)
  • Supplemental life insurance
  • 401(k)
  • Paid time off
  • Paid sick time
  • Short term & long term disability coverage (STD/LTD)
  • Employee stock ownership (ESOP)
  • Holiday pay for company designated holidays

Overview

At KeHE, we’re obsessed with creating solutions, unboxing potential, and serving others – and it all starts with you. As an employee-owned distributor of natural and organic, specialty, and fresh products, we’re committed to making a positive impact and scaling our success together. With a culture that fosters development and opportunity, you’ll be embarking on a career that’s moving forward. When you join KeHE, you’re becoming part of a team that is a force for good.

Primary Responsibilities

The Director of Infrastructure Engineering will lead the modernization of the company’s infrastructure organization from a traditional, legacy operating model to a secure, automated, cloud-enabled infrastructure platform engineering function. This role oversees networking, virtualization, storage, IBM i, data center infrastructure, and cloud engineering. This hands‑on leadership role requires a leader who can set strategy while remaining deeply engaged in architecture, engineering execution, migration planning, and operational support. The Director will build the practices, operating model, technologies, and team capabilities needed to advance cloud migration, automation, platform services, and technical debt reduction while enabling secure, reliable, and scalable infrastructure for the business. As with all positions at KeHE Distributors, we expect that all actions will be consistent with KeHE’s Mission, Vision, and Values.

Essential Functions

Infrastructure Strategy & Modernization

• Develop and execute the multi-year strategy and implementation plan for a modern Infrastructure Engineering organization across networking and compute.
• Treat infrastructure capabilities as products and services with defined internal customers, ownership, documentation, service levels, roadmaps, and measurable outcomes.
• Establish a security and automation-first engineering culture centered on Infrastructure as Code, observability, policy-as-code, metrics, standardization, security, reliability, and continuous improvement.
• Evaluate AI-enabled tools that improve engineering productivity, automation, operations, and platform delivery.
• Define transformation objectives, milestones, KPIs, adoption measures, customer feedback loops, and executive reporting to track progress and outcomes.

Cloud Engineering & Transformation

• Lead Cloud Engineering capability supporting production workloads across AWS and Microsoft Azure, including architecture standards, landing zones, governance, and operations.
• Develop repeatable practices for provisioning, managing, and optimizing cloud and hybrid workloads.
• Establish cloud operational practices resiliency, monitoring, incident response, lifecycle management, and cost optimization.
• Partner with application, data, and security teams to ensure secure, standardized, and cost-effective cloud adoption.

Network Engineering & Operations

• Integrate the network function into the broader Infrastructure Engineering operating model.
• Evolve network operations toward automation, IaC, APIs, version control, automated testing, CI/CD, monitoring, incident management, and lifecycle management.
• Ensure proper secure network architecture, segmentation, resiliency, operational controls, and standards.

Data Center & Legacy Infrastructure

• Oversee server, virtualization, storage, IBM i, and third-party data center environments while maintaining operational stability.
• Develop modernization plans for legacy infrastructure, including migration, consolidation, lifecycle management, retirement, and technical debt reduction.
• Establish standards for infrastructure reliability, capacity, patching, backup/recovery, monitoring, and automation.
• Identify opportunities to automate manual server, storage, and legacy platform engineering processes.

Security, Resilience & Operational Excellence

• Embed secure-by-default patterns, governance, monitoring, vulnerability management, and compliance expectations into infrastructure practices.
• Define service ownership, SLAs, SLOs, availability targets, operational KPIs, post-incident reviews, and lifecycle standards.
• Manage incident, problem, change, project, and technology partner management practices across areas of responsibility.
• Participate in after-hours support and major incident resolution as needed.
• Ensure infrastructure platforms support business continuity, disaster recovery, cyber resiliency, audit readiness, and enterprise risk reduction objectives.

Leadership, Talent & Stakeholder Partnership

• Retain, build, and develop talent with clear expectations and career paths.
• Establish consistent performance management practices, including clear goals, regular feedback, talent calibration, development planning, and accountability for results.
• Lead teams through transformation by clarifying priorities, removing obstacles, coaching leaders, and promoting accountability.
• Partner with technology, security, vendor, and business stakeholders to deliver secure, reliable, and cost-effective infrastructure outcomes.
• Other duties and assigned projects.

SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE AND ABILITIES:

• Strong knowledge of modern infrastructure operating models across networking, cloud, and platform engineering.
• Demonstrated experience leading multiple infrastructure disciplines, including network engineering, compute, virtualization, storage, cloud engineering, and data center infrastructure.
• Production experience with both AWS and Microsoft Azure, including cloud architecture, engineering, operations, migration, hybrid connectivity, governance, and optimization.
• Ability to operate at both strategic and highly technical levels, including hands‑on engagement during transformation, architecture reviews, migration planning, and incidents.
• Experience evaluating or implementing AI-enabled tools to improve infrastructure engineering, operations, automation, or service delivery.

• Exceptional communication, leadership, and strategic planning skills.
• Experience managing third‑party vendors and security partners.
• Ability to translate complex technical issues into executive-level insights and recommendations.

Core Competencies:

• Leadership and team development
• Cost and performance optimization
• Security‑first mindset
• Project management (planning, execution, risk mitigation)
• Strategic thinking and operational execution
• Problem‑solving and critical thinking
• Process optimization and automation
• User experience and service quality orientation
• Communication, collaboration, and vendor management

Minimum Requirements, Qualifications, Additional Skills, Aptitude

EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience.

• 10+ years of progressive experience in infrastructure engineering, systems engineering, cloud engineering or platform engineering, including 5+ years in a leadership role.
• Proven experience leading complex infrastructure migrations from on‑premises environments to Azure and/or AWS.
• Experience implementing Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, automation, configuration management, observability, and modern engineering practices at scale.
• Preferred experience with VMware workload migrations, data center exits, Terraform, CloudFormation, Bicep/ARM, Ansible, PowerShell, Hyper‑V, Kubernetes, SRE practices, SD‑WAN, SASE, Zero Trust, and cloud‑native networking.
• Relevant certifications across AWS, Azure, networking, security, or platform engineering certifications preferred.

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS:

• These physical demands are representative of the physical requirements necessary for an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of the job.

Requisition ID

2026-30159

Equal Employer Opportunity Statement

KeHE Distributors provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits all forms of discrimination and harassment on the basis of race, color, religion or faith, sex, gender, age, ancestry, national origin, mental or physical disability or medical condition, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, military or veteran status, genetic information, or any other category protected under federal, state, or local law. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including recruiting, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation and training as well as the administration of all Human Resources and Talent Acquisition processes.