Infrastructure Engineering Manager

Compass Datacenters•Dallas, TX

About The Position

This role owns the engineering and continuous improvement of Compass Datacenters’ internal IT infrastructure—both the datacenter-side systems (compute, networking, security) and the corporate back office environment (Microsoft 365, endpoints, end-user services). We’re hiring this role at a time when AI and automation are fundamentally changing what infrastructure work looks like. Routine tasks—manual configurations, basic troubleshooting, repetitive provisioning, ticket-driven break/fix—are being absorbed by AI-assisted tooling faster than most organizations are prepared for. We don’t need someone who will fight that shift. We need someone who will drive it. The right person for this role will treat AI copilots, automated remediation, and infrastructure-as-code not as threats to their value but as tools that let them operate at a higher level. Your job isn’t to be the person who manually configures switches and builds VMs. Your job is to be the person who designs the systems, policies, and automation that make that work happen reliably at scale—and who knows enough to step in when the automation can’t handle it. The role will start with two senior engineers and grow the team as workload demands. But “grow the team” may look different than it would have five years ago—fewer hands on keyboards, more focus on orchestration, integration, and judgment.

Responsibilities

Datacenter Infrastructure Engineering
Compute and virtualization: Engineer and maintain Nutanix HCI clusters (AHV/AOS), including capacity management, firmware lifecycle, and performance tuning.
Network engineering: Own configuration and maintenance of Cisco and Juniper switching and routing environments. Drive toward policy-driven, intent-based networking rather than box-by-box CLI management.
Security infrastructure: Manage Palo Alto firewalls, GlobalProtect VPN, and Panorama. Maintain rule sets, coordinate with security operations on policy changes, and keep configurations auditable and drift-free.
Cloud environments: Manage Compass’s AWS and Azure footprint. Maintain hybrid connectivity, manage resource provisioning through code, and keep costs visible.
Corporate IT & Backoffice Infrastructure
Microsoft 365: Own the M365 environment—Exchange Online, SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive, and Entra ID. Handle tenant configuration, licensing, security policies, and service health.
Endpoint management: Manage the endpoint fleet via Intune or equivalent MDM. Own device enrollment, compliance policies, OS patching, and application deployment across Windows, macOS, and mobile.
Identity and access: Administer Entra ID, conditional access policies, MFA, SSO integrations, and user lifecycle management. Keep access clean, auditable, and automated where possible.
End-user services: Ensure corporate users have reliable, well-supported technology. Manage the relationship with helpdesk and desktop support resources, whether internal or outsourced. Evaluate where AI-driven self-service and automated resolution can reduce ticket volume.
Automation, AI Integration & Modernization
Infrastructure as code: Drive adoption of Ansible, Terraform, and similar tools to replace manual CLI/GUI configurations with repeatable, version-controlled, peer-reviewed automation.
AI-assisted operations: Evaluate and integrate AI copilots and assistants into operational workflows—whether that’s Microsoft Copilot in the M365 stack, AI-driven network analytics, or LLM-based troubleshooting tools. Be the person who figures out what actually works versus what’s vendor hype.
Automated remediation: Build toward a model where common issues are detected and resolved without human intervention. Start with the easy wins (auto-patching, self-healing scripts, automated provisioning) and expand from there.
Reduce toil, not headcount: The goal of automation isn’t to eliminate jobs—it’s to redirect human effort toward architecture, security, and the complex problems that still require judgment. You should be constantly asking: “Why is a person doing this manually?”
Standardization: Build and maintain golden configurations, templates, and baselines for network devices, server builds, cloud resources, and endpoint policies. Automation only scales when the foundation is consistent.
Monitoring and observability: Implement and improve monitoring across the full stack. Integrate alerting with automated response where appropriate. Reduce noise so humans focus on signal.
Team, Vendor & Budget Management
Direct management: Manage one senior engineer initially, with the expectation of growing the team. Set technical direction, provide mentorship, and develop people who can work at the intersection of traditional infrastructure and automation.
Evolving the team model: As AI absorbs routine tasks, the skills your team needs will shift. You’re expected to anticipate that—hiring for adaptability, cross-training on automation, and rethinking how work gets distributed between humans and tooling.
Vendor management: Serve as the primary technical contact for core partners—Cisco, Nutanix, Palo Alto, Microsoft. Own support escalations, hardware lifecycle tracking, and renewal negotiations. Push vendors on their AI and automation roadmaps.
Budget: Manage the infrastructure engineering budget. As automation reduces operational overhead, reinvest savings into capability improvements rather than just cutting costs.
Project execution: Plan and deliver infrastructure projects—migrations, upgrades, new site buildouts, and platform rollouts. Keep them scoped, on schedule, and well-communicated.