Director, IT Engineering

As a full-time team member, you will have access to the following benefits:

• Medical (including prescription), Dental, Vision (UMA subsidized)
• FSA/HSA (Depending on Medical Plan chosen)
• Basic Life Insurance (UMA paid)
• Additional Voluntary Life Insurance (Team Member paid)
• Employee Assistance Program – EAP (UMA paid)
• Long Term Disability (UMA paid)
• Short Term Disability (Team Member paid)
• Supplemental Insurance such as Critical Illness, Accident, and Hospital (Team Member Paid)
• Paid Time Off – 15 days accrued in year 1, 9 holidays, and 1 day of Volunteering Time Off
• 401k (eligible upon completion of 90 days of employment and must be at least 18 years of age)
• Pet Insurance
• Identity Theft Protection

Purpose of the Position:

The Director, IT Engineering provides strategic and technical leadership for the design, implementation, and ongoing management of Vocate’s enterprise engineering capabilities. This role is responsible for building and leading high-performing engineering teams, establishing scalable and secure technology platforms, enabling enterprise shared services, and advancing cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, site reliability engineering, endpoint management, data platform infrastructure, automation, observability, and AI-enabling capabilities.

The Director partners closely with Enterprise Architecture, Information Security, Data and Analytics, Application Engineering, IT Operations, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Procurement, and business leaders to align engineering solutions with organizational objectives, regulatory requirements, enterprise initiatives, M&A activity, and long-term growth. The role is accountable for service reliability, engineering talent development, budget and vendor management, continuous improvement, and the delivery of secure, resilient, governed, scalable, and cost-effective technology services across Vocate, its institutions, subsidiaries, and future acquisitions.

What You’ll Do:

1. Provide Strategic IT Engineering Leadership: Set the vision, multi-year strategy, annual operating plan, technical standards, and roadmap for platform engineering, cloud infrastructure, reliability engineering, endpoint management, observability, automation, data platform infrastructure, and enterprise shared services. Align engineering priorities and investments with organizational objectives, enterprise initiatives, risk requirements, and measurable business outcomes.
2. Build and Scale Platform Engineering Capabilities: Establish and mature platform engineering capabilities from the ground up, including cloud landing zones, infrastructure-as-code, standardized environments, self-service engineering services, CI/CD enablement, configuration automation, policy-as-code, and reusable platform services. Improve delivery speed, consistency, security, scalability, and operational control.
3. Enable Enterprise Shared Services and Architecture: Design, implement, and govern reusable technology services that support multiple institutions, subsidiaries, legal entities, and business models. Apply Enterprise Architecture principles to determine when capabilities should be centrally governed, shared with logical separation, deployed through separate instances, locally operated through governed integration, or physically isolated due to legal, regulatory, contractual, security, or operational requirements.
4. Lead Cloud, Multi-Tenant, and Multi-Entity Architecture: Plan and oversee cloud and hybrid environments, including compute, networking, storage, containers, identity, productivity platforms, SaaS environments, cloud subscriptions, domains, administrative boundaries, access models, and data partitions. Enable secure collaboration, access, productivity, and data exchange while maintaining appropriate organizational, administrative, financial, and regulatory separation.
5. Lead Reliability Engineering and Operational Resilience: Establish site reliability engineering practices, service-level objectives, monitoring, alerting, observability, capacity planning, incident and problem management, backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity capabilities. Use service metrics and root-cause analysis to improve platform availability, performance, recoverability, and operational accountability.
6. Enable AI and Data Platform Infrastructure: Design and operationalize infrastructure and platform capabilities that support agentic AI, application AI, data and analytics workloads, AI operations, secure compute, model and tool connectivity, governed data access, usage monitoring, auditability, and cost management. Provide engineering leadership for data warehouses, data lakes, lakehouse platforms, streaming services, integration services, and legacy data infrastructure.
7. Lead M&A Due Diligence and Integration: Support mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and organizational restructuring by assessing infrastructure, cloud platforms, identity, endpoints, cybersecurity, data environments, staffing, contracts, licensing, technical debt, operational maturity, resilience, compliance exposure, integration complexity, and total cost of ownership. Develop and execute Day 1, Day 30, Day 100, and longer-term integration or separation plans.
8. Advance Security Engineering and Regulatory Compliance: Partner with Information Security, Legal, Compliance, and Privacy teams to embed secure architecture, zero-trust principles, vulnerability management, patching, endpoint controls, identity and access management, logging, monitoring, data protection, and audit evidence into engineering practices. Ensure technical capabilities support applicable obligations such as FERPA, GLBA, the FTC Safeguards Rule, HIPAA where applicable, state data-security and privacy laws, accreditation requirements, and contractual obligations.
9. Manage Budgets, FinOps, Vendors, and Engineering Initiatives: Develop and manage annual operating and capital budgets, cloud consumption, infrastructure spending, software licensing, managed services, staffing, and vendor commitments. Establish FinOps governance, including tagging, allocation, forecasting, unit economics, anomaly detection, optimization, and executive reporting. Oversee engineering initiatives to ensure clear outcomes, ownership, milestones, dependencies, financial controls, risks, and success measures.
10. Build, Mentor, and Develop Engineering Teams: Recruit, lead, coach, mentor, and retain high-performing engineering leaders and team members. Translate organizational objectives and approved initiatives into annual team goals, individual performance expectations, development plans, and measurable outcomes. Conduct regular one-on-one meetings, performance reviews, succession planning, recognition, and career-development activities.
11. Drive Continuous Improvement and Innovation: Promote a continuous-improvement and enhancement mindset focused on automation, simplification, service quality, technical-debt reduction, operational excellence, and measurable value. Use service metrics, incident trends, financial data, customer and employee feedback, audit findings, and technology developments to identify and prioritize improvements.
12. Collaborate Across the Organization: Work closely with IT Operations, Enterprise Architecture, Application Engineering, Data and Analytics, Information Security, Academic Technology, Finance, Legal, Compliance, Procurement, and business leaders to align roadmaps, resolve dependencies, prioritize initiatives, and deliver integrated technology solutions.
13. Lead with Care: Lead, coach, and develop team members, fostering a culture of wellness, recognition, accountability, inclusion, engagement, technical excellence, and continuous learning. Meet regularly with direct reports in one-on-one and group settings to provide feedback and cultivate/maintain a positive work culture.
14. Perform other duties as assigned.

Career Level Expectations:

• Has managed multiple large teams or departments.
• Owns mid- to long-term (3-5 years) strategy, execution and operational direction, and directs activities that have significant impact to the achievement of results for the job function or business.
• Problems faced are frequently complex and undefined, and typically involve leading cross-functional teams to determine root causes.
• Requires ability to influence others to accept practices and approaches, and ability to communicate with and influence senior executive leadership.
• Desire for growth and professional development.

Required Skills/Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree in information technology, computer science, engineering, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
• Strategic IT Leadership: Ability to develop and execute technology strategies, roadmaps, operating plans, budgets, and performance measures that align with institutional goals and
• Engineering Leadership and Talent Development: Proven success leading, mentoring, developing, and retaining high-performing engineering and infrastructure
• Cloud, Infrastructure, and Platform Engineering: Experience designing, implementing, and optimizing cloud and hybrid environments, infrastructure-as-code, automation frameworks, CI/CD pipelines, and scalable platform
• IT Operations and Service Reliability: Strong knowledge of system administration, network infrastructure, monitoring, incident management, capacity planning, disaster recovery, business continuity, and service reliability
• Enterprise Architecture and Solution Design: Ability to apply enterprise architecture principles, technical standards, and best practices to deliver scalable, secure, and sustainable technology
• Cybersecurity, Risk, and Governance: Experience implementing security controls, identity and access management, vulnerability management, risk mitigation, and technology governance
• Compliance and Data Protection: Working knowledge of FERPA, GLBA, accreditation requirements, privacy regulations, audit readiness, and data protection standards applicable to higher
• Budget, Vendor, and Financial Management: Experience managing operating and capital budgets, technology investments, software licensing, vendor relationships, contracts, and cost optimization
• Data, Analytics, and Emerging Technologies: Understanding of infrastructure and platforms supporting analytics, business intelligence, data management, AI-enabled solutions, and enterprise
• Project and Portfolio Management: Ability to prioritize, manage, and deliver multiple technology initiatives while balancing resources, timelines, risks, and organizational
• Continuous Improvement and Operational Excellence: Experience using operational metrics, stakeholder feedback, and performance data to improve services, processes, and team
• Stakeholder Collaboration and Communication: Exceptional ability to partner with academic, administrative, finance, compliance, and business leaders while translating complex technical concepts into clear, actionable guidance for diverse
• Ability to professionally communicate fluently in verbal and written English.
• Ability to contribute to a diverse and inclusive work environment.
• Computer literacy/basic computer skills to effectively navigate and utilize the technology required for the role.

Preferred Requirements:

• Any advanced degree or equivalent experience and/or strong or advanced proficiency in any of the above required skills/experience.
• Experience leading engineering capabilities in a multi-entity, regulated, higher education, financial services, healthcare, or similarly complex environment.
• Experience establishing enterprise shared services or centralized control-plane capabilities within a holding company, portfolio organization, or federated operating model.
• Direct experience supporting M&A due diligence, technology integration, divestiture, legal-entity restructuring, or technology separation.
• Hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Entra ID, Microsoft 365, ServiceNow, Databricks, Terraform or comparable infrastructure-as-code tooling, and modern monitoring and observability platforms.
• Experience designing identity, productivity, collaboration, cloud, data, and security architectures that support multiple institutions, subsidiaries, domains, tenants, or SaaS organizations.
• Working knowledge of ITIL, SRE, DevSecOps, FinOps, NIST, CIS Controls, or comparable technology management and control frameworks.
• Relevant certifications such as Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Azure DevOps Engineer Expert, AWS Solutions Architect Professional, FinOps Certified Practitioner, ITIL, CISSP, or equivalent credentials.
• Proficient in MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) and other business tools such as Microsoft Teams.

Compliance: 

• Demonstrate knowledge of, and carefully follows all applicable state laws and rules, federal and state compliance requirements and regulations including those prescribed by the U.S. Department of Education, accrediting agencies, state regulations and internal policies and procedures.  
• Effectively communicate compliance requirements to other staff as appropriate and quickly escalate any compliance concerns to the Compliance department. 

Work Environment/Physical Demands:

• This is a full-time remote position, with occasional onsite travel required.
• Home office set up, quiet place to work, ability to be on camera, and ability to hard wire into high-speed internet connection.
• May require setup of computer equipment; accommodation consideration available upon request.
• Flexibility to work evenings and weekends, as needed.