Head of IT Infrastructure & Operations, Sr. Director (remote)

Emergent Biosolutions • Gaithersburg, MD

1d • $206,500 - $250,000 • Remote

About The Position

The Senior Director, Head of IT Infrastructure & Operations leads strategy, engineering, security, reliability, and day-to-day operation of Emergent’s global technology infrastructure and end-user services. Reporting to the Chief Information Officer, the role is accountable for resilient, secure, compliant, and cost-effective delivery across hybrid cloud, data centers, networks, compute, storage, workplace technology, service management, collaboration, and infrastructure platforms supporting a global 24/7 business and regulated operations. The role modernizes the infrastructure operating model through automation, observability, data-driven service management, and responsible use of AI while maintaining disciplined lifecycle, continuity, validation, and vendor governance.

The position serves on the CIO’s IT Leadership Team and owns enterprise infrastructure and operations capabilities. It defines and executes a multi-year strategy, architecture, investment roadmap, lifecycle plan, and operating model aligned with business priorities and related enterprise functions. The role leads global infrastructure operations and employee technology services, establishes service performance and reporting practices, and partners with security and quality teams on cyber resilience, continuity, and regulatory compliance.

The role also develops automation-first and AI-enabled operational practices, owns financial planning and supplier governance, and leads and develops a diverse global team across employees, managed service providers, and specialist partners. The description notes that reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, information systems, business, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience.
• Typically 15+ years of progressive technology experience, including 7+ years leading multiple infrastructure, operations, engineering, or service delivery teams in a complex global enterprise.
• Demonstrated accountability for global, business-critical, 24/7 services delivered through a mix of internal teams, public cloud, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, colocation, telecommunications, managed services, and outsourcing partners.
• Executive leadership, business acumen, financial stewardship, and ability to communicate complex technology choices in terms of business value, risk, resilience, cost, and employee impact.
• Deep working knowledge of hybrid cloud, enterprise networking, compute, storage, backup and recovery, identity dependencies, endpoint and workplace technology, collaboration, telephony, monitoring, observability, and service management.
• Experience with automation, infrastructure as code, configuration management, APIs, DevSecOps, site reliability concepts, capacity engineering, and technology lifecycle management.
• Ability to establish metrics and use operational, experience, risk, and financial data to prioritize work and demonstrate outcomes.
• Strong knowledge of cybersecurity infrastructure controls and experience partnering with security teams on zero trust, segmentation, vulnerability and patch management, privileged access, secure configuration, logging, resilience, and incident response.
• Experience designing, testing, and improving business continuity and disaster recovery capabilities across complex application and infrastructure dependencies.
• Knowledge of cGMP expectations and experience supporting validated or qualified technology in regulated life-sciences environments, including change control, documentation, data integrity, and audit readiness.
• Experience governing AI-enabled operational use cases with controls for security, privacy, compliance, transparency, reliability, and human oversight.
• Proven ability to lead in a matrixed environment, build coalitions, influence executives, negotiate with suppliers, and manage competing priorities during incidents and transformation.
• Strong talent leadership, coaching, succession planning, organizational design, sourcing strategy, and cross-functional collaboration skills.
• Excellent written, verbal, presentation, and executive influencing skills.

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree.
• Experience leading enterprise-wide infrastructure transformation and operating-model change in a highly regulated environment; life-sciences, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or manufacturing experience is strongly preferred.
• Familiarity with ITIL practices and modern service management; relevant ITIL certification is preferred.
• Familiarity with cloud architecture and financial management practices; relevant cloud or FinOps credentials are preferred.
• Familiarity with recognized cybersecurity, resilience, and control frameworks used by the company.
• Experience supporting ERP, laboratory, manufacturing, quality, and data platforms with demanding availability, integration, and compliance requirements.

Responsibilities

• Serve on the CIO’s IT Leadership Team and act as executive owner for enterprise infrastructure and operations capabilities.
• Define and execute a multi-year infrastructure and operations strategy, architecture, investment roadmap, lifecycle plan, and operating model aligned with business priorities, enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, data strategy, and application modernization.
• Translate technology choices into business outcomes, risks, service commitments, investment requirements, and decision points for senior leaders.
• Provide infrastructure, integration, resiliency, and operability perspectives for enterprise programs, acquisitions, site changes, and major technology initiatives.
• Lead a hybrid cloud strategy spanning public cloud, SaaS, private hosting, and on-premises environments; establish standards for landing zones, connectivity, identity integration, workload placement, scalability, portability, and cost governance.
• Own infrastructure architecture and engineering standards across networks, compute, storage, backup, recovery, databases and middleware where assigned, collaboration, telephony, endpoint and workplace platforms, and operational tooling.
• Partner with application, data, security, quality, and business teams to ensure platforms are interoperable, supportable, validated where required, and designed for availability, performance, recoverability, and lifecycle sustainability.
• Establish technology currency and technical-debt practices to reduce unsupported platforms, single points of failure, and operational risk.
• Lead global 24/7 infrastructure operations, service desk, workplace services, major incident and problem management, change enablement, configuration and asset practices, capacity management, and service continuity.
• Establish service catalogs, service ownership, service level objectives and agreements, operational level agreements, KPIs, experience measures, and executive reporting tied to business impact.
• Develop monitoring, observability, event management, and command-center practices to identify degradation early, accelerate restoration, and drive corrective action.
• Improve employee technology experience across offices, laboratories, manufacturing and distribution environments, remote work, and executive support.
• Partner with the Chief Information Security Officer and Quality organization to embed security, access, vulnerability, patching, hardening, segmentation, backup protection, recovery, and logging requirements into infrastructure services.
• Own infrastructure disaster recovery and technology continuity capabilities, including recovery objectives, dependency mapping, crisis response integration, documented procedures, and regular exercises.
• Ensure infrastructure services meet company policies and regulated-life-sciences requirements, including controlled change, documentation, qualification or validation, data integrity, audit readiness, and evidence retention where required.
• Ensure operational risks, exceptions, and control gaps are visible, assigned, prioritized, and remediated or formally accepted.
• Develop an automation-first operating model using infrastructure as code, orchestration, self-service, policy as code, automated testing, and repeatable deployment and recovery patterns.
• Adopt AI-enabled operations responsibly for event correlation, knowledge retrieval, service desk support, capacity forecasting, anomaly detection, and operational decision support, with appropriate controls and human oversight.
• Create trusted operational data and dashboards for trend analysis, predictive insight, cost transparency, risk prioritization, and continual improvement.
• Build workforce capability in cloud, automation, AI, cybersecurity, service reliability, and modern engineering practices.
• Own infrastructure and operations financial planning, forecasting, cloud financial management, contract optimization, and investment prioritization.
• Lead strategic sourcing, including RFPs, RFIs, SOWs, contract and service-level negotiations, supplier performance, concentration risk, exit planning, and third-party resilience.
• Lead, develop, and retain a diverse global team; clarify accountabilities, succession, cross-training, on-call expectations, and skills plans across employees, managed service providers, and specialist partners.
• Create a culture of ownership, disciplined execution, transparency, collaboration, learning, and continuous improvement.
• Perform other duties as assigned.

Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits package; details are available through the company’s careers information.
• Certain roles are eligible for additional incentive compensation, including merit increases, annual bonus, and/or long-term incentives in the form of stock options.

What This Job Offers

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