Infrastructure & Cloud Lead

Description On-site in Dallas, TX Our client seeks an Infrastructure & Cloud Lead to drive concurrent delivery across four programs: recovery and business continuity, identity and access security, secure infrastructure operations, and cost and license rationalization. You will set technical direction, align executives on time-bound design decisions, and remain hands-on with delivery teams. A critical workstream involves a firewall management takeover for roughly 350 devices across about 350 sites, executed through fixed change windows while the incumbent remains under contract. You will keep one coherent architecture across seven roles and approximately twenty contributors, report weekly against outcomes as a contractual change-control mechanism, and transition operating capability to client-owned roles as programs complete. We can facilitate w2 and corp-to-corp consultants. For our w2 consultants, we offer a great benefits package that includes Medical, Dental, and Vision benefits, 401k with company matching, and life insurance. Rate: $135.00 to $145.00/hr. w2 JN -092026-108527 Responsibilities Set technical direction across four concurrent programs and maintain one architecture across delivery teams.Align executives on design decisions within five business days, including cloud migration versus datacenter refresh for approximately ninety production VMs.Direct recovery proof: immutable backups in production, isolated cloud recovery environment, end-to-end recovery test with remediation and re-test, and ratified recovery objectives per application tier.Lead Microsoft identity outcomes: hybrid Entra ID with on-premises Active Directory, authentication cutover, rebuilt tiered admin model, conditional access enforcement, and automated joiner/mover/leaver provisioning from the HR system of record.Deliver firewall management takeover: deploy centralized management, onboard estate, migrate and validate policy, hand over operations with runbooks, and maintain dual-destination monitoring during onboarding waves.Protect the change-window calendar with three weekly windows from late October to early December against portfolio-wide freezes and seasonal constraints.Oversee endpoint enrollment, coverage, alerting, dashboards, and drive down a vulnerability backlog of roughly 4,700 instances reconciled to ownership and exploitability.Direct Microsoft licensing efforts into an in-scope renewal: entitlement baseline, true-up, tenancy and consumption review, and program-by-program license modeling.Transfer operating capability to client-owned roles with established cadences, named ownership, and complete administrative runbooks and governance documentation.Report weekly on outcomes, effort versus estimate by program and role, and risks and issues as the mechanism for change control. Experience Requirements Proven leadership of an infrastructure program to a fixed external date with committed outcomes and written client acceptance.Delivery-focused profile rather than assessment and recommendation work.Track record running several workstreams concurrently with architectural consistency.Hands-on Microsoft identity depth: hybrid Entra ID and Active Directory, authentication cutover, conditional access in production, tiered admin models, and lifecycle provisioning from an HR source of truth. Capable of reviewing multiple identity engineers to a single design.Backup and recovery proven end to end, including failure remediation and re-test. Experience with Veeam on VMware on-premises and Azure restores.Network security operations at estate scale, including centralized firewall management deployments and change-window scheduling impacts.Experience taking infrastructure over from a third-party provider still under contract, with clarity on necessary written permissions before changes.Ability to direct approximately twenty contract staff across seven roles, including remote contributors and evening/weekend windows.Hands-on technical support to delivery teams rather than purely supervisory oversight.Executive credibility during escalations and late decisions. Education Requirements