Director of Engineering

Pennant Services • Eagle, TN

8d • Hybrid

About The Position

The IT Director of Engineering provides strategic and operational leadership for the Network, Firewall, Azure Infrastructure, and Telecom teams. Reporting to the VP of Infrastructure, the role is accountable for the architecture, reliability, security, scalability, and lifecycle management of enterprise infrastructure services supporting corporate offices, service centers, remote workers, and operating locations. The Director translates business requirements into engineering roadmaps, develops high-performing technical teams, strengthens operational resilience, and ensures infrastructure investments improve availability, security, performance, user experience, and cost efficiency. The role partners with Information Security, Enterprise Applications, Service Delivery, Finance, Compliance, and business leaders. Travel to company locations and participation in major-incident response may be required.

The Director leads infrastructure strategy and operations across enterprise networking, firewall and network security, Azure, and telecom services. The position establishes engineering standards and operational practices, manages budgets and vendors, leads infrastructure work related to acquisitions and other major initiatives, and reports on service and engineering performance. It also supports compliance with company policies, contractual obligations, data-protection requirements, and healthcare-related security and privacy requirements, including HIPAA where applicable. Hands-on technical leadership may be needed during business-critical conditions.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or an equivalent combination of education and directly relevant experience.
• Eight or more years of progressive experience in infrastructure engineering or operations, including at least five years leading technical teams or managers in a complex, multi-site enterprise environment.
• Demonstrated experience leading enterprise network, firewall/security infrastructure, Microsoft Azure infrastructure, and telecom or unified communications functions.
• Experience developing technology roadmaps, leading major infrastructure transformations, managing operating and capital budgets, and governing strategic vendors and service providers.
• Strong working knowledge of routing, switching, wireless, SD-WAN, DNS/DHCP, VPNs, network segmentation, high availability, performance monitoring, and carrier connectivity.
• Strong working knowledge of enterprise firewall platforms and security controls, including next-generation firewalls, intrusion prevention, secure remote access, web application firewalls, DDoS protection, zero-trust principles, policy governance, and security logging.
• Strong working knowledge of Microsoft Azure architecture and governance, including landing zones, subscriptions, management groups, Azure Policy, role-based access control, virtual networks, ExpressRoute or VPN connectivity, compute, storage, backup, recovery, monitoring, and cost management.
• Working knowledge of enterprise voice and collaboration services, Session Border Controllers, SIP services, call routing, emergency calling, contact-center integrations, and telecom carriers.
• Ability to evaluate architecture trade-offs and balance security, reliability, performance, maintainability, speed, and cost.
• Proven ability to lead through major incidents, ambiguous conditions, competing priorities, and organizational change while maintaining clear decision-making and executive communication.
• Strong financial and vendor-management skills, including budgeting, forecasting, contract review, licensing analysis, cloud cost management, and service-level accountability.
• Strong written, verbal, and presentation skills, including the ability to communicate technical risks and recommendations in business terms.
• Demonstrated commitment to documentation, automation, standardization, continuous improvement, service ownership, customer experience, and measurable outcomes.
• Ability to participate in after-hours escalation as needed, support planned maintenance windows, and travel to company locations based on business needs.
• Positive attitude and commitment to the Company's culture, core values, ethical standards, privacy expectations, and service-oriented operating model.

Nice To Haves

• Experience supporting distributed locations and a mobile or remote workforce.
• Experience in healthcare, home health, hospice, post-acute care, or another regulated industry.
• Experience with mergers and acquisitions, infrastructure integrations, data-center or cloud migrations, disaster recovery, and critical-incident leadership.
• Relevant certifications such as Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Azure Network Engineer Associate, Cisco CCNP/CCIE, Palo Alto Networks PCNSE, Fortinet FCSS, ITIL 4, or comparable credentials.

Responsibilities

• Lead and provide accountability for the Network, Firewall, Azure Infrastructure, and Telecom teams, including organizational design, workforce planning, recruiting, coaching, succession planning, performance management, and technical development.
• Develop and maintain a multi-year infrastructure engineering strategy and roadmap aligned with business growth, acquisitions, cybersecurity requirements, cloud adoption, financial objectives, and operational risk tolerance.
• Own enterprise network architecture and operations, including LAN, WAN, wireless, SD-WAN, DNS, DHCP, IP address management, remote access, internet connectivity, carrier services, and connectivity for offices, service centers, cloud environments, and acquired locations.
• Own firewall and network-security engineering, including policy governance, segmentation, secure remote access, VPN, intrusion prevention, web application protection, rule lifecycle management, configuration standards, vulnerability remediation, and coordination with Information Security.
• Lead Azure infrastructure architecture and operations, including subscriptions, management groups, landing zones, identity integration, networking, compute, storage, backup, disaster recovery, monitoring, governance, policy, automation, and cost optimization.
• Lead enterprise telecom services, including unified communications, voice carriers, contact-center integrations, toll-free services, emergency calling, number management, call routing, and telecom expense management.
• Establish and enforce engineering standards, reference architectures, configuration baselines, documentation requirements, lifecycle standards, and design-review practices across assigned technology domains.
• Ensure infrastructure availability and resilience through capacity planning, proactive monitoring, redundancy, backup and recovery testing, disaster recovery exercises, patching, vulnerability remediation, hardware and software lifecycle management, and removal of unsupported technology.
• Serve as senior escalation and incident leader for critical infrastructure outages and security events, coordinating stakeholder communications, business-impact assessment, technical response, service restoration, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions.
• Strengthen operational discipline through ITIL-aligned incident, problem, change, configuration, and service management practices; ensure high-risk changes receive technical review, testing, implementation and rollback planning, and post-implementation validation.
• Manage infrastructure budgets, forecasts, contracts, licensing, cloud consumption, carrier spend, and vendor performance; identify ways to reduce total cost of ownership without unacceptable service, security, or resilience risk.
• Lead infrastructure due diligence and integration for acquisitions, divestitures, new locations, relocations, and major business initiatives, including discovery, risk assessment, connectivity, security, migration, cutover, and stabilization planning.
• Define and report service and engineering metrics, including availability, latency, capacity, incident trends, mean time to restore, change success rate, lifecycle compliance, security remediation, Azure cost performance, carrier performance, and roadmap delivery.
• Communicate infrastructure priorities, risks, architecture decisions, investment needs, and operational performance to technical teams, business leaders, executive leadership, auditors, and other stakeholders.
• Ensure services comply with applicable company policies, contractual requirements, data-protection obligations, and healthcare-related security and privacy requirements, including HIPAA where applicable.
• Perform other job-related duties as assigned and provide hands-on technical leadership when business-critical conditions require it.

Benefits

• Full benefits package, including medical, dental, vision, and 401(k) with match.
• Paid time off and holiday pay.
• Professional development.
• Work-life balance.
• Opportunity to work with passionate, high-achieving leaders focused on patient outcomes and team success.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director