Director - IT Infrastructure Engineering & Operations

Description

United's Digital Technology team is comprised of many talented individuals all working together with cutting-edge technology to build the best airline in the history of aviation. Our team designs, develops and maintains massively scaling technology solutions brought to life with innovative architectures, data analytics, and digital solutions.

Job overview and responsibilities

The Director of IT Infrastructure Engineering & Operations is a strategic and hands-on technology leader responsible for driving the modernization, reliability, and automation of the organization's infrastructure landscape. This role oversees the design, engineering, and operational excellence of global compute, storage, network, and cloud environments, ensuring they deliver secure, scalable, and high-performing services that enable business growth.

This leader will guide the evolution from traditional infrastructure management toward a software-defined, automated, and cloud-first model, leveraging Infrastructure as Code (IaC), continuous integration pipelines, and private cloud capabilities. They will be accountable for ensuring end-to-end availability and resilience of critical systems, while advancing automation and observability practices that improve efficiency and reliability.

The role requires a strong blend of strategic vision, technical depth, and operational discipline-balancing innovation with stability. The Director will lead cross-functional engineering and operations teams, foster collaboration across IT, Security, and Application domains, and cultivate a culture of empowerment, continuous learning, and measurable outcomes.

This position reports to the MD of Global IT Operations and plays a pivotal role in shaping the future of IT infrastructure delivery through modern engineering principles, automation, and cloud-native design.

• Strategic Leadership & Vision:
  • Develop and execute the strategic roadmap for IT infrastructure that enables scalability, reliability, and automation across hybrid (on-prem, private cloud, public cloud) environments
  • Align infrastructure initiatives with organizational objectives, business outcomes, and digital transformation goals
  • Drive a cultural shift from traditional operations to software-defined, automated, and self-service infrastructure delivery
• Infrastructure Engineering & Operations:
  • Oversee the architecture, engineering, and operation of compute, storage, network, and data center infrastructure across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
  • Ensure availability, performance, and reliability of core systems through resilient designs and proactive observability practices
  • Establish and enforce infrastructure standards, governance, and compliance controls to meet security and regulatory requirements
  • Lead modernization efforts to transition legacy platforms toward automated and cloud-native architectures
• Automation & Infrastructure as Code:
  • Champion Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using tools such as Terraform, Ansible, or Pulumi to enable consistent, repeatable infrastructure provisioning.
  • Drive automation of infrastructure lifecycle management, including provisioning, scaling, patching, and decommissioning.
  • Collaborate with development and platform engineering teams to integrate infrastructure into CI/CD pipelines for continuous delivery
  • Define and implement service catalogs and self-service capabilities to improve speed, agility, and operational efficiency
• Cloud & Private Cloud Management:
  • Oversee the design, deployment, and management of private cloud platforms (e.g., VMware, OpenStack, Nutanix) to provide internal cloud services with public cloud-like agility
  • Manage and optimize usage of public cloud services (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform) including cost control, governance, and performance optimization
  • Establish hybrid cloud connectivity, identity, and policy management to ensure seamless interoperability
  • Implement cloud-native observability and reliability engineering practices (e.g., SLOs, error budgets, automated healing)
• Operational Excellence & Reliability:
  • Lead the global infrastructure operations team to deliver 24x7 support, monitoring, and incident response for critical systems
  • Establish metrics and KPIs for performance, reliability (MTTR, availability), and efficiency, driving continuous improvement through data-driven insights
  • Partner with Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and DevOps teams to enhance resilience, observability, and system automation.
  • Ensure disaster recovery, business continuity, and capacity planning strategies are tested and effective
• Leadership & Talent Development:
  • Build and mentor high-performing, cross-functional engineering and operations teams that embrace DevOps and automation-first mindsets.
  • Foster collaboration across IT, security, and application teams to improve velocity and reduce friction.
  • Cultivate a culture of learning, innovation, and accountability that empowers teams to deliver high-quality outcomes
• Financial & Vendor Management:
  • Manage infrastructure budgets, forecasting, and cost optimization across on-prem and cloud environments
  • Oversee vendor relationships and contracts to ensure alignment with performance, cost, and innovation objectives

Qualifications

What's needed to succeed (Minimum Qualifications):

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related
• 12+ years of IT operations management experience
• In-depth knowledge of data center IT infrastructure, including networking technologies
• Strong understanding of industry standards, regulatory requirements, and best practices in operations and management
• Excellent leadership, communication, and interpersonal skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively across organizational boundaries
• Demonstrated analytical and problem-solving abilities, with a focus on driving continuous improvement and innovation
• Experience in travel industry, especially airline related is a significant plus
• Proven project management skills