Technical Manager - Infrastructure

Harper College; Palatine (IL); On-site; USD 140,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Harper College seeks an experienced Infrastructure Manager to lead a team responsible for reliable, secure, and efficient operation of campus infrastructure services. You will oversee network, systems, data center, monitoring, backup, identity, and related platforms, delivering projects aligned with college priorities.

You will drive incident response, develop runbooks, and coordinate with vendors while communicating risks and progress to IT leadership.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in IT, CS, or engineering or equivalent experience.
• At least ten years of progressive infrastructure experience.
• Experience coordinating projects and supervising staff.
• Proven ability to troubleshoot outages and coordinate restoration.
• Strong written, verbal, and interpersonal communication.

Responsibilities

• Lead a team of infrastructure professionals and set priorities.
• Oversee daily network, systems, and data center operations.
• Monitor service health, backups, patching, capacity, and security.
• Coordinate major incidents and ensure timely recovery actions.
• Develop SOPs, runbooks, and cross-training to reduce errors.
• Manage infrastructure policies, standards, and security controls.
• Plan lifecycle and projects with clear milestones and reporting.
• Analyze operations data to automate and improve availability.
• Manage vendors, contracts, and renewals.
• Collaborate with IT leadership and campus partners.

Skills

People leadership

Coaching

Delegation

Workload planning

Team development

Incident management

Project planning

Vendor management

Budgeting

Executive reporting

Customer service

Education

Bachelor's degree in information technology, computer science, or engineering

Tools

Platform9

Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Ubuntu

Microsoft Active Directory

Cisco networking

F5

Nagios

Palo Alto Networks

Job description

General Function

Manages the team responsible for the reliable, secure, and efficient operation of Harper College infrastructure services. The role combines people leadership with hands-on technical oversight across network, systems, data center, monitoring, backup, identity, and related platforms. The manager establishes operational standards, directs incident response and service restoration, reduces recurring risk through documentation and root-cause follow-up, and delivers infrastructure projects aligned with institutional priorities.

Overview

General Function

Manages the team responsible for the reliable, secure, and efficient operation of Harper College infrastructure services. The role combines people leadership with hands-on technical oversight across network, systems, data center, monitoring, backup, identity, and related platforms. The manager establishes operational standards, directs incident response and service restoration, reduces recurring risk through documentation and root-cause follow-up, and delivers infrastructure projects aligned with institutional priorities.

Characteristic Duties

• Leads, coaches, and develops a team of infrastructure professionals; sets priorities, assigns work, establishes performance expectations, and supports career development.
• Oversees daily network, systems, platform, and data center operations to maintain reliable, secure, and responsive service delivery to the College community.
• Monitors service health and operational risk, including backups, job scheduling, patching, capacity, power, cooling, and core network and server infrastructure.
• Leads triage and coordination for major incidents and service interruptions; provides hands-on technical troubleshooting when needed, engages subject-matter experts, communicates status, and ensures follow-up actions are completed.
• Establishes and maintains standard operating procedures, runbooks, diagrams, inventories, escalation paths, and cross-training practices that reduce errors, shorten recovery time, and expand team coverage.
• Administers and recommends infrastructure policies and technical standards that protect the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of College systems and data.
• Coordinates enforcement of network and data-security controls, including firewall rules, physical and logical segmentation, secure configuration, vulnerability remediation, and infrastructure hardening.
• Leads lifecycle planning for infrastructure platforms, including upgrades, renewals, capacity needs, technical debt, end-of-life replacement, and service continuity.
• Plans and delivers infrastructure projects; define scope, schedule, resources, risks, dependencies, and success measures, and provides clear progress reporting to IT leadership and stakeholders.
• Analyzes operational processes and service data to identify recurring issues, automate repeatable work, improve availability, and strengthen support outcomes.
• Manages suppliers and service partners, including service expectations, performance, costs, renewals, escalations, and opportunities for service improvement.
• Collaborates with IT leaders and campus partners to integrate technology, security, fiscal, educational, and personnel planning in support of the College mission.
• Maintains current knowledge of infrastructure technologies, security practices, and industry standards; evaluate and recommend practical improvements.
• Serves as acting Director when designated and performs other related duties as assigned.
• Balances day-to-day operational ownership with long-term planning and project delivery.
• Builds an accountable, service-oriented team culture centered on communication, documentation, cross-training, and continuous improvement.
• Communicates technical risk, outages, options, and recommendations clearly to technical and nontechnical audiences.
• Exercises sound judgment during high-impact incidents and coordinates work across teams, vendors, and leadership.
• Participates in committees, councils, task forces, and project teams as assigned.
• Performs related duties as assigned.

Supervision

Under the general supervision of an Information Technology Director. Supervises assigned exempt and non-exempt technical staff and provides direction to project staff and service partners.

Working Conditions

Standard support hours are 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Committee, project, maintenance, and incident-response responsibilities may require work outside standard hours. This position supports 24/7 infrastructure operations and participates in after-hours escalation. The manager must be able to troubleshoot directly and coordinate the appropriate technical resources during service interruptions.

Equipment Used

Current technologies include Platform9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, Microsoft Active Directory, Cisco networking, F5, Nagios, and Palo Alto Networks. Technology assignments may evolve as College needs and standards change.

Minimum Acceptable Qualifications

Education: Bachelor's degree in information technology, computer science, engineering; OR an equivalent combination of relevant education and experience.

Required Experience

• At least ten years of progressively responsible, hands-on infrastructure technology experience, including experience coordinating technical work, leading projects, or supervising technical staff.
• Demonstrated experience supporting enterprise network, server, Linux, virtualization, monitoring, backup, data center, or security technologies.
• Experience leading outage response, troubleshooting complex infrastructure issues, and coordinating restoration across multiple technical disciplines.
• Strong written, verbal, organizational, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Ability to quickly assess unfamiliar situations, establish priorities, make sound decisions, and communicate clearly under pressure.

Preferred Experience

• Experience with several technologies in the College environment, such as Platform9, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Microsoft Active Directory, Cisco, F5, Nagios, or Palo Alto Networks.
• Experience with infrastructure automation, configuration management, capacity planning, disaster recovery, business continuity, and lifecycle management.
• Experience managing vendors, contracts, operating expenses, renewals, or capital infrastructure investments.
• Relevant certifications such as Cisco, Red Hat, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, ITIL, PMP or comparable credentials.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

• People leadership, coaching, delegation, workload planning, and team development.
• Infrastructure operations management, service reliability, monitoring, incident management, problem management, change coordination, and operational documentation.
• Network, systems, identity, platform, data center, backup, and infrastructure-security concepts.
• Project planning, risk management, vendor management, budgeting, and executive-level status reporting.
• Customer service, collaboration, negotiation, and communication with diverse campus stakeholders.
• Ability to translate institutional needs into practical, supportable, secure, and cost-conscious technology solutions.