Director of IT Infrastructure - York, NE

Central Valley Ag Cooperative•York, NE

11d•Onsite

About The Position

The Director of IT Infrastructure owns the platform every other technology function at Central Valley Ag depends on: the network connecting CVA locations across Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska; the servers, storage, and cloud services that run the business; identity and endpoint management; and the site support that keeps employees working. This role is accountable for availability. CVA's business has seasonal peaks-planting and harvest-when a network outage at a location stops trucks and scales, not just email. The Director is expected to plan around those peaks, to test recovery rather than assume it, and to lead a team that works at locations as well as at a desk. This is a business leadership role that happens to own infrastructure. It is not a senior technical position. The Director sets directions, builds and defends the budget, forecasts what the business will need before it asks, and develops the team; the hands-on engineering is done by that team. The majority of this job is spent outside the technology function-with region and division leadership, with finance, and with vendors. Deep technical credibility is necessary to hold the team's respect and to judge their work, but it is not what this position is measured on. Success looks like a region manager saying technology understood what their operation needed before they had to explain it, and a finance partner saying the infrastructure budget was built credibly and landed where it said it would.

Requirements

Seven or more years in IT infrastructure, including hands-on network and systems experience.
Three or more years leading a technical team or demonstrated equivalent leadership responsibility.
Demonstrated ownership of an operating and capital budget, including building it, forecasting it, and answering for variance.
A track record of partnering with business leaders outside technology-operations, finance, or a commercial function-where the outcome depended on understanding their business rather than on technical execution.
Business partnership. Able to sit with a region manager or division leader, understand how their operation actually runs, and translate that into infrastructure requirements before being asked. This is the single most important requirement of the position.
Budget ownership and forecasting. Demonstrated experience building an annual operating and capital budget, forecasting it through a year, and explaining variance to a finance partner. Managing spending against someone else's budget is not the same thing.
Strategic planning. Able to produce and defend a multi-year roadmap that connects technology decisions to business outcomes, and to say no to work that does not serve them.
Executive communication. Able to present to senior leadership and translate technical risk into operational and financial consequence. Comfortable being the only technologist in the room.
Vendor and carrier negotiation on commercial terms, including contracts, renewals, and service levels.
Enterprise networking: routing, switching, wireless, WAN and SD-WAN, and multi-site connectivity.
Windows Server, Active Directory, virtualization, and storage technologies.
Microsoft 365 and Azure administration, including hybrid identity.
Backup and disaster recovery design, execution, and testing.
Endpoint management and support operations across distributed sites.
Budget ownership, vendor and carrier management, and lifecycle planning.
Leadership of a distributed team, including staff based at locations rather than at headquarters.
Calm, structured incident management, and the discipline to communicate during an outage rather than after it.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor's degree in a technology-related field such as computer science, computer information systems, or management information systems.
Experience supporting distributed operational sites-plants, terminals, elevators, or similar-not only office environments.
Experience with operational technology alongside corporate IT.
Experience in agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, or another multi-site operating business.
Experience integrating infrastructure through acquisitions.
Relevant technical certifications in networking, Microsoft, or cloud platforms.

Responsibilities

Own the relationship with the business. Meet regularly and on a set cadence with region and division leadership across grain, agronomy, feed, and energy. Understand their operating calendar, their growth plans, and their pain points well enough to anticipate what they will need rather than react to what they ask for. Be the person they call before they make a decision, not after.
Own the infrastructure budget. Build the annual operating and capital budget, forecast it through the year, explain variance to finance in their language, and manage to it. Bring a multi-year capital plan, not an annual request.
Own the infrastructure strategy. Maintain a three-to-five-year roadmap aligned to CVA's technology strategy, make and defend build-versus-buy recommendations, and sequence the work so it lands when the business needs it and away from planting and harvest.
Represent technology in business forums. Present to and influence senior leadership, and translate technical risk into operational and financial terms a non-technical executive can act on.
Negotiate with vendors and carriers on commercial terms, not just technical specification-contracts, renewals, service levels, and total cost.
Plan capacity against the business, not the technology: growth, acquisitions, location openings, closures, and remodels.
Lead, coach, and develop the IT Infrastructure team across network administration, systems administration, and location-based support-including building successors.
Own the availability of CVA's core infrastructure: network, servers, storage, virtualization, cloud platform services, and telephony.
Own endpoint management and the day-to-day support experience for employees at CVA locations.
Own identity and directory services in partnership with IT Security.
Own backup, recovery, and disaster recovery-including regularly testing recovery rather than assuming it works.
Plan and execute infrastructure lifecycle: capacity, refresh, upgrades, and end-of-life, with a multi-year view and a budget behind it.
Deliver infrastructure for new, acquired, and remodeled locations on the business's timeline.
Own infrastructure change management: planned, communicated, reversible, and kept clear of seasonal peaks wherever possible.
Partner with IT Security on controls, patching, and incident response; with Enterprise Architecture on standards; and with Applied Innovation on application hosting.
Manage vendors, carriers, contracts, licensing, and the infrastructure budget.
Establish and report service levels for uptime, response, and resolution.
Maintain infrastructure documentation and runbooks so that no individual is a single point of failure.
Other duties as assigned.