Executive Director, IT Infrastructure & Automation

Carnegie-Mellon-University; Pittsburgh (Allegheny County); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Tuition remission

Retirement plan

Healthcare options

Paid time off

Job summary

Carnegie Mellon University seeks a technology leader to provide executive leadership for network, data center, and communications services that support its academic, research, and administrative missions. The role focuses on automating operations across university-operated, hosted, and cloud environments to improve consistency, scalability, and reliability.

You will lead directors and senior technical experts, drive architectural and organizational change, and partner with IT teams and campus

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• Significant progressive leadership experience (10+ years) in enterprise networking, data centers, IT infrastructure, or related technology services, including leading managers and senior technical contributors.
• Demonstrated success leading architectural, technical, and organizational change to advance standardization, automation, and service delivery without sacrificing the reliability, availability, and stability of critical infrastructure services.
• Experience with operational resilience, service management, financial planning, strategic sourcing, vendor management, and contract negotiation.
• Demonstrated experience negotiating complex, high-value vendor contracts and managing strategic network provider agreements.
• Ability to discuss technical issues with engineers, frame choices for executives, and build productive relationships with technical and nontechnical collaborators and partners.

Responsibilities

• Develop and implement a cohesive, multi-year strategy across the portfolio, including infrastructure architecture, software platforms, management, and automation.
• Build automation into the operating model through consistent configuration management, standard interfaces, observability, and shared automation platforms and practices.
• Ensure services are secure, scalable, sustainable, and reliable while continuously improving how they are operated and delivered.
• Collaborate with IT and campus partners to establish clear service standards and improve resource management, availability, performance, incident response, and lifecycle management.
• Develop reusable capabilities that enable teams to consume infrastructure consistently, automate processes, and innovate more quickly.
• Negotiate major vendor contracts, service level agreements (SLAs), and pricing for enterprise networking and services in your portfolio.
• Lead architecture, capacity, resilience, sustainability, and capital planning across the portfolio, including determining the right balance of university-operated, hosted, and cloud infrastructure and services to meet evolving institutional needs.
• Set direction for the organization, develop leaders and technical talent, and foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, continuous improvement, and engineering rigor.
• Lead the organizational and operational changes required to expand automation at scale while maintaining the reliability of critical services.
• Establish priorities and make decisions within delegated authority, balancing institutional needs, technology, risk, service quality, staffing, and cost.
• Provide financial stewardship and oversee strategic vendor relationships.
• Represent the portfolio in university planning, governance, and major institutional initiatives.

Skills

Leadership experience

Vendor management

Contract negotiation

Executive communication

Automation at scale

Education

Bachelor's degree

Master’s degree

Tools

Infrastructure as Code

SDN

Configuration mgmt

Observability

Hybrid cloud

Job description

Carnegie Mellon University seeks a technology leader to provide executive leadership for network, data center, and communications services that support its academic, research, and administrative missions. The role focuses on automating operations across university-operated, hosted, and cloud environments to improve consistency, scalability, and reliability.

You will lead directors and senior technical experts, drive architectural and organizational change, and partner with IT teams and campus