Director, Infrastructure Engineering

KeHE Distributors, LLC•Naperville, IL

About The Position

At KeHE, we’re obsessed with creating solutions, unboxing potential, and serving others – and it all starts with you. As an employee-owned distributor of natural and organic, specialty, and fresh products, we’re committed to making a positive impact and scaling our success together. With a culture that fosters development and opportunity, you’ll be embarking on a career that’s moving forward. When you join KeHE, you’re becoming part of a team that is a force for good.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent experience.
10+ years of progressive experience in infrastructure engineering, systems engineering, cloud engineering or platform engineering, including 5+ years in a leadership role.
Proven experience leading complex infrastructure migrations from on-premises environments to Azure and/or AWS.
Experience implementing Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD, automation, configuration management, observability, and modern engineering practices at scale.
Strong knowledge of modern infrastructure operating models across networking, cloud, and platform engineering.
Demonstrated experience leading multiple infrastructure disciplines, including network engineering, compute, virtualization, storage, cloud engineering, and data center infrastructure.
Production experience with both AWS and Microsoft Azure, including cloud architecture, engineering, operations, migration, hybrid connectivity, governance, and optimization.
Ability to operate at both strategic and highly technical levels, including hands-on engagement during transformation, architecture reviews, migration planning, and incidents.
Experience evaluating or implementing AI-enabled tools to improve infrastructure engineering, operations, automation, or service delivery.
Exceptional communication, leadership, and strategic planning skills.
Experience managing third-party vendors and security partners.
Ability to translate complex technical issues into executive-level insights and recommendations.
Leadership and team development
Cost and performance optimization
Security-first mindset
Project management (planning, execution, risk mitigation)
Strategic thinking and operational execution
Problem-solving and critical thinking
Process optimization and automation
User experience and service quality orientation
Communication, collaboration, and vendor management

Nice To Haves

Preferred experience with VMware workload migrations, data center exits, Terraform, CloudFormation, Bicep/ARM, Ansible, PowerShell, Hyper-V, Kubernetes, SRE practices, SD-WAN, SASE, Zero Trust, and cloud-native networking.
Relevant certifications across AWS, Azure, networking, security, or platform engineering certifications preferred.

Responsibilities

Develop and execute the multi-year strategy and implementation plan for a modern Infrastructure Engineering organization across networking and compute.
Treat infrastructure capabilities as products and services with defined internal customers, ownership, documentation, service levels, roadmaps, and measurable outcomes.
Establish a security and automation-first engineering culture centered on Infrastructure as Code, observability, policy-as-code, metrics, standardization, security, reliability, and continuous improvement.
Evaluate AI-enabled tools that improve engineering productivity, automation, operations, and platform delivery.
Define transformation objectives, milestones, KPIs, adoption measures, customer feedback loops, and executive reporting to track progress and outcomes.
Lead Cloud Engineering capability supporting production workloads across AWS and Microsoft Azure, including architecture standards, landing zones, governance, and operations.
Develop repeatable practices for provisioning, managing, and optimizing cloud and hybrid workloads.
Establish cloud operational practices resiliency, monitoring, incident response, lifecycle management, and cost optimization.
Partner with application, data, and security teams to ensure secure, standardized, and cost-effective cloud adoption.
Integrate the network function into the broader Infrastructure Engineering operating model.
Evolve network operations toward automation, IaC, APIs, version control, automated testing, CI/CD, monitoring, incident management, and lifecycle management.
Ensure proper secure network architecture, segmentation, resiliency, operational controls, and standards.
Oversee server, virtualization, storage, IBM i, and third-party data center environments while maintaining operational stability.
Develop modernization plans for legacy infrastructure, including migration, consolidation, lifecycle management, retirement, and technical debt reduction.
Establish standards for infrastructure reliability, capacity, patching, backup/recovery, monitoring, and automation.
Identify opportunities to automate manual server, storage, and legacy platform engineering processes.
Embed secure-by-default patterns, governance, monitoring, vulnerability management, and compliance expectations into infrastructure practices.
Define service ownership, SLAs, SLOs, availability targets, operational KPIs, post-incident reviews, and lifecycle standards.
Manage incident, problem, change, project, and technology partner management practices across areas of responsibility.
Participate in after-hours support and major incident resolution as needed.
Ensure infrastructure platforms support business continuity, disaster recovery, cyber resiliency, audit readiness, and enterprise risk reduction objectives.
Retain, build, and develop talent with clear expectations and career paths.
Establish consistent performance management practices, including clear goals, regular feedback, talent calibration, development planning, and accountability for results.
Lead teams through transformation by clarifying priorities, removing obstacles, coaching leaders, and promoting accountability.
Partner with technology, security, vendor, and business stakeholders to deliver secure, reliable, and cost-effective infrastructure outcomes.
Other duties and assigned projects.