Head of Engineering, Infrastructure

GEICO•Palo Alto, CA

17h•Hybrid

About The Position

GEICO is seeking a Head of Engineering, Infrastructure to lead Platform Infrastructure Engineering (PIE). This organization is responsible for the compute, network, cloud, data center, and identity platforms that power GEICO's operations. The role reports directly to the Chief Information Officer and is part of the Foundations senior leadership team. PIE is the largest team within the Foundations organization, which manages shared infrastructure, developer tooling, data, identity, and platform services. GEICO operates a hybrid, multi-cloud infrastructure across on-premises data centers, colocation facilities, AWS, Azure, and GCP. This position will oversee the continued development of this environment, enhancing cloud-native capabilities, optimizing workload placement, and ensuring operational excellence across the entire infrastructure footprint. The role leads an organization of approximately 300 engineers and leaders across eight functional areas: Network Engineering, Data Center Operations, Data Center Systems Engineering, Hybrid Cloud Engineering, Identity and Security Engineering, Customer Success, Performance/Capacity/FinOps, and a strategic program management function. Collaboration with Distinguished Engineers on technical leadership is also a key aspect of this role.

Requirements

15+ years of progressive engineering leadership experience in infrastructure, with at least 5 years leading large-scale infrastructure organizations (200+ engineers) at the VP or Head-of level.
Deep experience operating across hybrid and multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-premises/colocation).
Demonstrated track record of optimizing workload placement and deepening cloud-native adoption at enterprise scale.
Strong technical grounding across networking, compute, storage, identity/access management, and data center operations.
Proven ability to lead large-scale data center buildouts, site migrations, and decommissions while maintaining business continuity.
Experience building and operating modern network architectures, including software-defined networking and SD-WAN.
Strong executive communication skills, able to present strategy, risk, and tradeoffs clearly to C-level leadership and board-level audiences.
Experience operating in a regulated industry (financial services, insurance, healthcare, or equivalent) with fluency in compliance frameworks (e.g., NYDFS, PCI-DSS, SOX).
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.
Track record of delivering measurable cost-to-serve improvements through FinOps, utilization optimization, and infrastructure consolidation.
Experience leading infrastructure organizations through large-scale technology transformations or re-platforming initiatives.
Familiarity with insurance, financial services, or other highly regulated consumer-facing industries.
Experience partnering with Distinguished Engineer or Fellow-level technical leaders to drive architectural strategy.

Responsibilities

Own the continued evolution of GEICO’s hybrid multi-cloud infrastructure across on-premises, colocation, AWS, Azure, and GCP.
Optimize workload placement and deepen cloud-native capabilities across all environments.
Mature platform abstractions that give engineering teams portability and cost optimization across clouds.
Own GEICO’s end-to-end Layer 3+ network, including backbone, edge, SD-WAN, branch office connectivity, and software-defined networking.
Drive network modernization to support modern traffic patterns across cloud and on-premises environments.
Oversee physical data center strategy, including capacity planning, power and cooling, facilities reliability, and site lifecycle.
Lead fleet management, server hardware, storage systems, and OS across all environments.
Own the enterprise identity and security engineering function, including secrets management, certificate lifecycle, encryption, tokenization, and privileged access controls.
Ensure secure, compliant, and frictionless identity for all associates and systems.
Improve infrastructure developer experience by reducing mean time to deploy and delivering self-service provisioning.
Automate governance and compliance controls and enable infrastructure-as-code across the hybrid cloud.
Drive cost transparency and unit economics across all infrastructure services.
Own capacity planning, demand forecasting, utilization improvement, and cloud spend governance.
Ensure infrastructure meets regulatory and compliance requirements (NYDFS, PCI, and others).
Deliver high-availability targets, proactive incident management, and resilient failover and disaster recovery across all sites and regions.
Build, scale, and develop a high-performing infrastructure engineering organization of approximately 300 engineers and leaders.
Recruit and retain top engineering talent and cultivate a culture of ownership, technical rigor, and measurable impact.