Director of Infrastructure, IT and Security

Carina; Seattle (WA); Hybrid; USD 130,000 - 170,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical benefits

Dental benefits

Vision benefits

401k options

PTO days

Job summary

Carina, a nonprofit technology organization, seeks a Director of Infrastructure, IT and Security in Seattle. Hybrid work with remote options from multiple states.

Lead stability, security, and efficiency of production infrastructure, internal IT systems, and employee technology while partnering with executives on risk and growth. The role balances strategic direction with hands-on execution, owns cloud platform decisions, and guides governance, ADRs, and incident response.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in information technology, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or related field.
• 10+ years of technology experience with leadership in infrastructure, platform operations, DevOps/SRE, or security.
• 5+ years with cloud infrastructure and production systems, preferably AWS.
• Experience overseeing internal IT systems, vendor partnerships and managed services.
• Experience applying cybersecurity frameworks (NIST, CIS Controls, HIPAA, SOC 2).
• Proven ability to partner with executives on strategy, risk management, and scaling initiatives.
• Ability to lead governance structures and drive cross‑functional collaboration.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute an infrastructure roadmap aligned with goals, security, and mission impact.
• Lead production cloud infrastructure operations including IaC, pipelines, observability, incident response, and DR.
• Advise executives on platform scalability, reliability, and technology investments.
• Document ADRs for architecture decisions and ensure domain-owner sign‑offs.
• Establish governance, security standards, and best practices for production environments.
• Own incident escalation paths, capacity planning, and availability standards with Engineering.

Skills

Strategic thinking

Hands-on execution

Leadership

Risk management

Communication

Adaptability

Mission-driven

Education

Bachelor’s degree in IT / CS / Cybersecurity

Tools

AWS

Terraform

CI/CD

Observability tooling

Job description

Director of Infrastructure, IT and Security

Carina is a nonprofit technology organization founded in 2016 that operates an online home care matching platform. We connect individuals who need publicly funded home care services, including Medicaid, with home care workers seeking meaningful work and good jobs. We work closely with state and local governments, labor unions, training funds, and private employers. Since our founding, Carina has successfully facilitated thousands of matches, resulting in more than 5 million hours of home care being delivered.

Carina has been recognized as an MIT Solver in the care economy, a Black & Brown Innovator honoree by MIT Solve, and an honoree on CareGuild’s Care at Scale List, highlighting our innovative approach to strengthening the care workforce and expanding access to care.

Location: Hybrid work Headquartered in Downtown Seattle, remote work possible from CA, IL, NY, RI, OR and WA

Work Schedule: This is a 40 hour-per-week role. Employees are expected to be available during core business hours of 9:00am – 4:00pm, Monday through Friday. The remaining hours may be flexed before or after core hours based on workload and business needs.

Travel Requirements: Up to 10%

Category: Full-Time, FLSA Exempt, Regular

Physical Requirements: Must be able to perform tasks that may require prolonged periods of sitting or standing, with or without reasonable accommodation.

Position Summary

The Director of Infrastructure, IT, and Security is responsible for overseeing the stability, performance, reliability, and security of Carina's production infrastructure, internal IT systems, employee technology, and business applications. This role bridges infrastructure operations, internal IT, security functions, and employee technology management to ensure scalable, secure, efficient, and compliant operations for business continuity.

The Director will partner cross-functionally to identify opportunities to modernize workflows, improve decision making, increase organizational efficiency, and reduce organizational risk.

This role leads the company's cybersecurity, risk management framework, and compliance programs while shaping the overall infrastructure, IT, security, and operational strategy. It requires a strategic, hands-on leader who can balance day-to-day execution with long-term transformation initiatives.

The Director is expected to directly contribute to infrastructure and cloud platform decisions, including infrastructure as code, environment design, deployment reliability, observability, incident response, backup and recovery planning, and secure cloud configuration. The role will balance direct technical contribution with internal IT leadership, vendor management, governance, and executive communication. This role owns the platform layer - the AWS account, the services running in it, and how those are selected, provisioned, secured, and operated. Application and feature architecture is owned by Engineering; data architecture, schema, models, pipelines, reporting and analytics are owned by Data; this role provides the secure, reliable foundation on which both operate.

• Strategic thinking with hands-on execution ability
• Strong leadership and team development skills
• Risk management, change management and problem-solving mindset
• Excellent communication and stakeholder engagement
• Adaptability in a resource constrained environment
• Commitment to our mission and values

You Will:

Infrastructure & Platform Operations

• Develop and execute a comprehensive infrastructure roadmap aligned with organizational goals, product delivery, security needs, and mission impact;
• Lead operations for Carina's production cloud infrastructure, including infrastructure as code, deployment pipelines and tooling, observability, incident response, capacity planning, and disaster recovery while release cadence and deployment approval remain with engineering;
• Serve as a strategic advisor to executive leadership on platform scalability, reliability, operational risk, security posture, and technology investments;
• Guide cloud architecture decisions, system upgrades, migrations, environment design, and implementation of new platform technologies and when decisions materially change application or data architecture, they are documented as ADRs with sign-off from the affected domain owner(s);
• Establish infrastructure and operational governance, security standards, documentation, and best practices for production environments;
• Own incident escalation paths, capacity planning , and availability and reliability standards for production systems. On-call rotation, production support expectations, and response commitments are defined jointly with Engineering.

Internal IT & Business Systems

• Develop and execute an internal IT roadmap that supports staff productivity, organizational growth, secure operations, and business continuity;
• Oversee employee technology, endpoint management, identity and access systems, internal networks, collaboration tools, business applications, and managed service providers;
• Partner with data and engineering regarding data syncs and reporting related to platforms where appropriate;
• Lead and manage contractors, vendor partners, and any future internal IT staff. While engineering and data staff report through the Engineering manager and Data and Engineering director respectively, partner closely to provide mentorship and coordination;
• Establish IT governance, policies, standards, support practices, and lifecycle planning across internal systems;
• Maintain IT asset inventory, vendor relationships, tool ownership, support expectations, and operational documentation;
• Manage internal system upgrades, migrations, implementation of new tools, and retirement of outdated systems.

Cybersecurity & Risk Management

• Provide strategic leadership for the organization's cybersecurity strategy, including threat prevention, detection capabilities, operational readiness, and effective incident response management;
• Implement and maintain security controls to protect sensitive client, worker, caregiver, operational, and employee data;
• Ensure compliance with relevant regulations and frameworks, such as HIPAA, NIST, CIS Controls, SOC 2, or other applicable requirements;
• Deliver or coordinate cybersecurity training and security awareness practices for staff;
• Own end-to‑end security review processes for vendor onboarding, tools, integrations, and material system changes, including documentation of security and compliance impacts;
• Define and maintain security standards for cloud architecture, application design, access control, secrets management, logging, and monitoring. Domain owners implement these standards within their systems and provide evidence of compliance; this role audits, reports, and escalates gaps.

Systems Management

• Support secure systems integration and platform connectivity across internal business systems;
• Own backup, retention, and disaster recovery planning for all systems, including RPO/RTO targets and demonstrated restore capability;
• Partner with Director of Data and Engineering to support data governance needs;
• Ensure secure and efficient use of cloud-based services (e.g. Microsoft 365, Azure, AWS);
• Conduct third‑party risk assessment and ensure vendor due diligence meets control requirements.

Budgeting and Vendor Management

• Develop and manage the IT and infrastructure budget, ensuring cost‑effective solutions and ROI on technology investments as well as resource allocations;
• Manage relationships and negotiate contracts with vendors, consultants and service providers;
• Identify opportunities for nonprofit discounts and grants for technology;
• Perform projecting/modeling as needed in collaboration with executives on opportunities.
• Partner with cross‑functional teams to understand technology needs and improve operational efficiency by aligning technical initiatives with business goals;
• Ensure responsive IT support and service delivery for staff and stakeholders;
• Present security risks, threats and trends to executive leadership;
• Translate complex technical concepts into accessible terms for non‑technical audiences;
• Participate in cross‑domain architecture decisions through documented ADRs with domain‑owner sign‑off.

You Have:

• Bachelor’s degree in information technology, Computer Science, Cybersecurity, or related field, or equivalent experience;
• 10+ years of progressive technology experience, including leadership responsibility in infrastructure operations, platform operations, DevOps/SRE, internal IT, security operations, or a closely related function;
• 5+ years working directly with cloud infrastructure and production systems, preferably including AWS, infrastructure as code, CI/CD, observability, incident response, backup/recovery, and secure environment management;
• Experience overseeing internal IT systems, employee technology, identity and access management, business applications, vendor‑managed services, or similar company technology operations;
• Experience applying cybersecurity frameworks and best practices, such as NIST, CIS Controls, HIPAA, SOC 2, or equivalent risk and compliance programs;
• Proven ability to work with executive leadership on operational strategy, technology direction, risk management, and scaling initiatives;
• Ability to balance strategic planning with hands‑on infrastructure and operational leadership;
• Demonstrated ability to establish and lead governance structures and risk management frameworks to shape the organizational security stance and resilience;
• Experience overseeing budget management, vendor partnerships, and cross‑functional initiatives to drive operational performance.

It Would be Great If You Have:

• Experience in the nonprofit sector;
• Relevant certifications, such as CISSP, CISM, CompTIA Security+, ITIL, AWS, or Terraform;
• Experience with technologies and practices such as AWS, Terraform or other infrastructure as code tools, cloud networking, managed databases, CDN/WAF services, CI/CD pipelines, monitoring and alerting, identity and access management, endpoint management, Microsoft 365, and security tooling.
• $145,000
• Fully Paid Medical, Dental and Vision;
• 18 days PTO, 15 Sick days, 9 holidays, 1 floating holiday and 2 personal days;
• 401k and pension options;
• Fitness, cell phone, internet and furniture stipends.
• Mid-year summer break and end of the year winter break

Carina provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

Equal Opportunity Employer
This employer is required to notify all applicants of their rights pursuant to federal employment laws.For further information, please review the Know Your Rights notice from the Department of Labor.