Director of ITS Infrastructure Services

About the Role

Under the general supervision of the Acting Chief Information Officer of Information Technology Services, the Director of Infrastructure Services provides strategic, operational, personnel, technical, and budgetary leadership for the university’s core technology infrastructure, including Telecommunications and Network Services, voice services, Systems Administration, datacenter infrastructure, and related enterprise infrastructure services. The position is responsible for ensuring that these services are secure, reliable, available, scalable, sustainable, and aligned with campus operational needs, CSU requirements, institutional priorities, and long-term technology planning. Provides strategic leadership for infrastructure architecture, technology standards, lifecycle strategies, and long-range modernization roadmaps that support the University's academic, research, and administrative missions. The Director leads infrastructure teams and works collaboratively with ITS leadership, Facilities, vendors, and campus stakeholders to plan, maintain, modernize, and improve critical infrastructure services with campus-wide impact. This position emphasizes leadership, coordination, planning, risk management, and service accountability rather than day-to-day hands-on technical support.

This is a full-time, benefited, exempt, 12-month pay plan, at-will position in the Department of Network Services. This position is an Administrator II in the California State University Management Personnel Plan (MPP). Under this plan, incumbents are subject to normal management reviews and serve at the pleasure of the University President. This position is an internal recruitment open only to active, stateside, Cal Poly Humboldt Employees.

Key Responsibilities

• Infrastructure Services Leadership – 30%
  • Working with minimal direction, provides strategic, operational, personnel, technical, and budgetary leadership for Infrastructure Services. This includes responsibility for:
    • Telecommunications and Network Services, including data network, voice network, telecommunications, and network physical plant infrastructure;
    • Systems Administration, including enterprise server, storage, backup, operating system, virtualization, monitoring, and related systems infrastructure; and
    • Campus datacenter infrastructure, including equipment lifecycle planning, maintenance coordination, physical infrastructure needs, and related budget oversight.
    • Enterprise and research computing infrastructure, including high-performance compute resources, enterprise storage platforms, research networking infrastructure, and associated infrastructure services.
  • Determines organizational objectives; interprets university and CSU policy; delegates assignments to subordinate staff; develops, implements, and evaluates unit procedures and standards; participates with the ITS leadership team in the development of division policies and priorities; and is responsible for achieving goals and objectives with campus-wide impact.
• Team Leadership, Supervision, and Workforce Development – 20%
  • Directly supervises assigned Infrastructure Services staff, including network, voice, systems administration, and related positions.
  • Assigns work, establishes priorities, evaluates performance, supports professional development, coaches and mentors staff, promotes effective communication, and fosters a collaborative, accountable, service-oriented team culture.
  • Builds teams that are consultative, responsive, and able to address both routine and complex campus infrastructure issues.
• Technical Infrastructure Planning, Enterprise Architecture, Security, Datacenter, and Lifecycle Management – 25%
  • Provides technical and management leadership for University infrastructure architecture. Areas of responsibility include:
    • Network topologies and telecommunications systems;
    • Server and operating system environments;
    • Virtualization, storage, backup and recovery, monitoring, and related infrastructure platforms; and
    • Datacenter equipment and supporting infrastructure.
    • Enterprise compute platforms, research network and computing infrastructure, cloud-hosted infrastructure, and supporting technologies.
  • Provides leadership for the enterprise infrastructure that supports research computing, including compute platforms, storage, networking, virtualization, backup, and related infrastructure services.
  • Collaborates with ITS campus research support staff to implement and support the infrastructure capabilities required for research computing.
  • Ensures infrastructure services are secure, reliable, available, scalable, documented, and aligned with campus operational needs and information security requirements.
  • Develops and maintains infrastructure architecture standards, technical roadmaps, lifecycle replacement strategies, and infrastructure design principles to support sustainable, resilient, and scalable enterprise technology services.
  • Provides leadership for datacenter equipment and infrastructure planning, including lifecycle replacement; capacity planning; risk management; maintenance coordination; disaster recovery considerations; and business continuity planning and recovery testing; coordination with Facilities on power, cooling, cabling, building access, maintenance, and other physical infrastructure needs.
  • Applies security strategies and provides technical leadership for network, systems, and infrastructure security incidents.
  • Collaborates with Information Security to implement infrastructure security controls, improve operational resilience, and reduce technology risk.
• Budget, Vendor, Contract, and Resource Management – 10%
  • Tracks, plans, and oversees assigned Infrastructure Services budgets, including networking, telecommunications, systems administration, datacenter equipment, hardware, software, licensing, maintenance agreements, multi-year lifecycle replacement planning, and related operating expenses.
  • Approves purchase requests, works with ITS administrative support to forecast expenses and cost-recovery activity where applicable, develops budget and effort analyses for one-time and ongoing projects, and manages vendor relationships and escalations.
• Infrastructure Projects, Change Management, and Service Improvement – 10%
  • Coordinates with the ITS Project Management Office and cross-functional ITS teams to plan and execute infrastructure projects, acting as sponsor, coordinator, technical lead, or stakeholder as appropriate.
  • Participates in enterprise change management; ensures infrastructure changes are documented, reviewed, tested, communicated, and implemented with appropriate risk management; and supports after-action review, root-cause analysis, and continual service improvement.
  • Works with ITS Help Desk and campus communication partners to communicate service changes, outages, new processes, and infrastructure impacts.
• Other Duties as Assigned – 5%

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities

As related to the Classification Standards:

• Thorough knowledge of information technology infrastructure principles, practices, procedures, and service delivery models.
• Strong working knowledge of telecommunications, network architecture, network topologies, protocols, and transmission technologies.
• Working knowledge of systems administration concepts, including operating systems, servers, storage, virtualization, monitoring, backup and recovery, and enterprise infrastructure support.
• Knowledge of infrastructure security practices, including confidentiality, integrity, availability, access control, risk reduction, and protection of sensitive information and digital assets.
• Strong organizational, analytical, and project planning skills to evaluate complex infrastructure issues, assess risk, prioritize work, and develop sound recommendations.
• Strong communication and interpersonal skills to explain complex technical issues clearly to technical and non-technical audiences.
• Skill in supervising, leading, mentoring, and developing professional and technical staff.
• Ability to work collaboratively with diverse stakeholders, including ITS teams, Facilities, vendors, campus administrators, faculty, staff, and students.
• Ability to effectively communicate with a diverse population.

As related to the major responsibilities for this position:

• Ability to provide strategic, operational, personnel, technical, and budgetary leadership for network, voice, systems administration, datacenter, and related infrastructure services.
• Ability to determine unit objectives, establish service priorities, delegate assignments, evaluate performance, and ensure accountability for results.
• Ability to oversee infrastructure standards, operating procedures, documentation, change management, lifecycle planning, and continual service improvement.
• Ability to plan and manage assigned budgets, purchase requests, maintenance agreements, licensing, hardware/software renewals, vendor contracts, and datacenter equipment lifecycle needs.
• Ability to coordinate with Facilities and other campus partners on construction, renovation, cabling, power, cooling, access, physical plant, and datacenter infrastructure requirements.
• Ability to serve as a project sponsor, coordinator, technical lead, or stakeholder for infrastructure projects with campus-wide impact.
• Ability to manage vendor relationships and escalate complex issues to vendor or community support resources when appropriate.
• Ability to use IT service management practices, ticketing systems, service metrics, and change management processes to improve service delivery.

Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree from an accredited college or university in computer science, inf