Director, Network and Data Center Services

OculusIT; New Haven (CT); On-site; USD 175,000 - 230,000; Full time

Job summary

OculusIT is seeking a senior technical leader to guide Network Engineering, Network Operations, and Data Center Services. This role focuses on design, reliability, modernization, and operational excellence of OculusIT’s network and data center infrastructure.

The leader will drive transformation through automation, observability, resiliency, and modern engineering practices, ensuring scalable, secure, highly available infrastructure aligned with business objectives.

Qualifications

• 10+ years in large-scale network and infrastructure leadership.
• Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent.
• Proven track record leading 24x7 network operations and major transformations.
• Experience with data center infrastructure and automation.

Responsibilities

• Lead architecture, engineering, and lifecycle management of enterprise networks (LAN/WAN, SDN).
• Establish standards for performance, resiliency, segmentation, and security.
• Drive modernization toward automated, code-defined network operations with observability.

Skills

Leadership

Enterprise networking

SDN

Data center

Automation

Observability

Incident management

ITSM

Mentoring

Stakeholder management

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Monitoring platforms

Infrastructure as Code

Job description

OculusIT is seeking a senior technical leader to lead Network Engineering, Network Operations, and Data Center Services. This role will be responsible for the design, reliability, modernization, and operational excellence of OculusIT’s network and data center infrastructure. The leader will drive transformation through automation, observability, resiliency, and modern engineering practices, ensuring infrastructure is scalable, secure, highly available, and aligned with business and technology objectives.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the architecture, engineering, and lifecycle management of enterprise and software-defined networks.
• Establish standards for performance, resiliency, segmentation, and security.
• Drive modernization toward automated, code-defined network operations and integrated observability.

Network Operations

• Own 24x7 network operations, including availability, performance, monitoring, and incident response.
• Modernize network monitoring and observability platforms and operating models.
• Establish disciplined practices for monitoring, alerting, escalation, and incident management.
• Track and improve key metrics such as uptime, MTTR, latency, and incident recurrence.
• Own the end-to-end data center strategy and roadmap across on-prem, colocation, and cloud environments.
• Address capacity, operational risk, resiliency, and disaster recovery requirements.
• Develop scalable infrastructure strategies to support business growth and evolving technology needs.

Resiliency & Reliability

• Embed resiliency by design across network and data center services.
• Identify and eliminate single points of failure and validate failover and recovery capabilities.
• Ensure infrastructure aligns with DR, RTO/RPO, availability, and reliability objectives.

Automation & Observability

• Champion automation across network operations, data center workflows, configuration, and infrastructure lifecycle management.
• Partner with automation/platform teams to adopt Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and reduce manual effort and operational risk.
• Establish unified observability across network, data center, and infrastructure environments with actionable alerts integrated into incident management.
• Lead and develop network engineering, operations, and data center teams.
• Build a culture of ownership, accountability, engineering rigor, automation, and continuous improvement.
• Partner closely with Infrastructure Engineering, TechOps, Information Security, and other technology teams.
• Influence effectively across complex and decentralized organizational environments.

Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years of related experience, with proven leadership of large-scale network and infrastructure environments.
• Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Deep expertise in:
• Enterprise networking, LAN/WAN, SDN, and campus networks
• Data center infrastructure and compute integration
• Network monitoring and observability platforms
• Automation and modern infrastructure operations
• Experience leading 24x7 network operations and major infrastructure transformation initiatives.
• Strong understanding of resiliency engineering, disaster recovery, ITSM, incident/change/problem management.
• Proven ability to lead, mentor, and manage large technical teams.

Leadership Skills:

• Strong technical authority and credibility across engineering and operations.
• Excellent analytical, critical-thinking, problem-solving, communication, and presentation skills.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts to senior leadership and stakeholders.
• Strong stakeholder-management and influencing skills.
• Proven ability to manage multiple complex projects, timelines, budgets, and priorities.
• Ability to drive accountability while developing and retaining technical talent.
• Strong understanding of industry trends and modern infrastructure best practices.