Vice President, Infrastructure Operations

TKO Group Holdings, Inc; New York (NY); On-site; USD 169,000 - 225,000; Full time

Job summary

TKO Group Holdings, Inc. in New York seeks a Vice President of Infrastructure Operations to lead 24x7 global IT infrastructure across hybrid environments for UFC, WWE, and other brands. You will ensure availability, performance, and compliance, and drive standardization, automation, and FinOps.

You will act as Incident Commander for major outages, shape ITSM practices, meet SOX/GDPR controls, mentor a global team, and provide executive-level reporting on risk and uptime.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in IT/engineering.
• 12+ years of enterprise infrastructure operations experience.
• Experience leading large hybrid IT operations (cloud + on-prem).
• Hands-on familiarity with ITSM/SRE/automation programs.
• Experience with monitoring/observability platforms (ServiceNow, Datadog, Splunk).
• Excellent executive communication and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead global 24x7 infrastructure operations across endpoint, cloud, network, and collaboration platforms.
• Serve as Incident Commander for high-severity outages and drive post-incident reviews and RCA.
• Mature ITSM processes (Incident, Problem, Change, CMDB) and drive service-level accountability.
• Develop and enforce SLOs/SLIs, capacity standards, and error budgets for availability.
• Oversee reliability engineering (SRE) initiatives and automation to reduce toil.
• Manage vendor relationships and optimize OPEX/CAPEX budgets.
• Ensure SOX/ITGC, GDPR compliance and data retention controls.
• Lead disaster recovery and business continuity testing and improvement.
• Mentor and scale a global operations team with clear career pathways.
• Provide executive visibility through weekly operational reviews and metrics.

Skills

Operational Leadership

Reliability Engineering

Service Management

Technical Breadth

Financial Acumen

Crisis Management

People Leadership

Strategic Communication

Execution Focus

Continuous Improvement

Communication

Ambiguity

Resilience

Customer Orientation

Education

Bachelor's degree in information technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field

Tools

ServiceNow

Datadog

Splunk

Job description

Who We Are:

TKO Group Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: TKO) is a premium sports and entertainment company. TKO owns iconic properties including UFC, the world’s premier mixed martial arts organization; WWE, the global leader in sports entertainment; and PBR, the world’s premier bull riding organization. Together, these properties reach 1 billion households across 210 countries and territories and organize more than 500 live events year-round, attracting more than three million fans. TKO also services and partners with major sports rights holders through IMG, an industry-leading global sports marketing agency; and On Location, a global leader in premium experiential hospitality.

The Vice President of Infrastructure Operations will serve as the operational leader and second-in-command to the SVP, Global Infrastructure. This role is responsible for running the day-to-day global infrastructure operations across TKO’s enterprise and event environments, ensuring availability, performance, and compliance across network, cloud, endpoint, collaboration, and identity platforms. This position is accountable for establishing operational excellence, service reliability, and continuous improvement across UFC, WWE, IMG, PBR, and OLE brands. The VP will lead 24 × 7 global operations, manage vendor performance, and drive standardization, automation, and efficiency across the hybrid environment as TKO continues its separation from Endeavor and builds a greenfield IT platform.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Lead global 24 ×7 infrastructure operations encompassing endpoint management (Intune/JAMF/Endpoint Central), and messaging collaboration (M365/Slack/Box/Zoom) service reliability.
• Serve as Incident Commander for high‑severity outages and lead post‑incident reviews, communications, and RCA delivery.
• Partner with Service Delivery leadership and ServiceNow operators to mature Infrastructure ITSM processes (Incident, Problem, Change Request, CMDB, Knowledgebase) and drive service‑level accountability across all teams.
• Develop and enforce SLOs/SLIs, error budgets, and capacity standards to ensure continuous service availability and performance.
• Oversee reliability engineering (SRE) and automation initiatives to reduce toil and improve resilience.
• Manage vendor relationships and commercial performance for key partners (e.g., Microsoft, Palo Alto, Okta, CrowdStrike, Lumen and other ISPs).
• Govern OPEX and maintenance CAPEX budgets, lead FinOps cost optimization, and identify measurable efficiency gains.
• Partner with Security, Compliance, and Audit to ensure operational adherence to SOX/ITGC, GDPR/UK GDPR, and data retention controls.
• Lead disaster recovery and business continuity planning, testing, and continuous improvement.
• Develop, mentor, and scale a high‑performing global operations team; build succession depth and career pathways.
• Establish a weekly Operations Review with key performance, change, and risk metrics for executive visibility.
• Partner closely with enterprise project teams to ensure seamless transitions from build to run.
• Drive operational readiness for all infrastructure projects and platform changes.

SKILLS & ABILITIES

• Operational Leadership: Proven ability to run mission‑critical, global IT Infrastructure operations and serve as executive escalation point during major incidents.
• Reliability Engineering: Strong grasp of SRE principles, automation, observability, and resilience engineering.
• Service Management: Deep understanding of ITIL and ITSM tools, with focus on metrics‑driven improvement.
• Technical Breadth: Familiar with enterprise‑grade systems including Okta, Entra ID, M365, Box, Zoom, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto SASE/NGFW, SD‑WAN, Wi‑Fi, and endpoint management.
• Financial Acumen: Skilled at managing OPEX budgets, vendor contracts, and FinOps initiatives.
• Crisis Management: Composure under pressure with the ability to lead coordinated incident response efforts.
• People Leadership: Builds strong teams through clarity, mentorship, and accountability.
• Strategic Communication: Effectively interfaces with executives, translating technical risk and operational performance into business terms.
• Execution Focus: Balances long‑term vision with tactical delivery, driving measurable uptime and performance outcomes.
• Continuous Improvement Mindset: Uses data and metrics to improve stability, reduce MTTR, and optimize cost‑to‑serve.
• Communication: Strong written and verbal communication skills; able to influence stakeholders and explain complex concepts to technical and non‑technical audiences.
• Comfort with Ambiguity: Thrives in environments where direction is still forming and able to bring structure and clarity to grey areas.
• Resilience: Maintains focus and composure under pressure in fast‑moving, high‑visibility environments.
• Customer Orientation: Keeps business impact front of mind; balances technical excellence with pragmatic execution

QUALIFICATIONS & TRAINING

Required:

• Bachelor’s degree in information technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or related field, or equivalent experience.
• 12+ years of experience managing enterprise infrastructure operations, including global environments.
• Proven track record leading teams responsible for large‑scale hybrid IT operations (cloud + on‑prem).
• Demonstrated experience implementing or improving ITSM, SRE, or automation programs.
• Hands‑on familiarity with operational platforms such as ServiceNow, Datadog, or Splunk for monitoring and observability.
• Excellent executive communication and cross‑functional collaboration skills.

Preferred:

• Experience leading IT operations in sports, media, or event‑driven environments.
• Demonstrated success in vendor negotiations, cost optimization, and service delivery improvement.
• Exposure to M&A or carve‑out transformations.
• Certifications such as ITIL Expert, PMP, or equivalent leadership credentials.

Per local requirements and in the interest of transparency, the hourly rate shown below reflects the prevalent current hiring range for this position. Hiring pay rates are based on a number of factors, including location and may vary depending on job‑related qualifications, knowledge, skills and experience. The company strives to provide locally competitive rewards packages, which include base rate along with, as applicable, short‑ and long‑term incentives, growth and developmental opportunities, and robust benefits, such as health care, retirement, vacation and other paid time off, and additional offerings.

Hiring Rate Minimum:

$168,750 annually (minimum will not fall below the applicable State/local minimum salary thresholds)

Hiring Rate Maximum:

$225,000 annually

TKO is an Equal Opportunity Employer and complies with all applicable federal, state, and local laws regarding non‑discrimination in employment. TKO makes employment decisions based on merit and qualifications, without considering an employee’s or applicant’s race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, marital status, veteran status, or any other basis prohibited under federal, state or local laws governing non‑discrimination in employment in every location in which the Company has facilities. TKO also provides reasonable accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and applicable state or local laws. For information about Privacy and Information Security for TKO employment candidates, please review our Privacy Policy. For information regarding Terms of Use for this and other TKO websites, please review our Terms of Use.