Infrastructure Operations Lead

Pacific Life•Newport Beach, CA

1d•$184,680 - $225,720•Hybrid

About The Position

Providing for loved ones, planning rewarding retirements, saving enough for whatever lies ahead – our policyholders count on us to be there when it matters most. It’s a big ask, but it’s one that we have the power to deliver when we work together. We collaborate and innovate – pushing one another to transform not just Pacific Life, but the entire industry for the better. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. Pacific Life is more than a job, it’s a career with purpose. It’s a career where you have the support, balance, and resources to make a positive impact on the future – including your own. Pacific Life is investing in bright and agile talent to contribute to our mission of innovating our business and creating a superior customer experience. We're actively seeking a talented Infrastructure Operations Lead to join our Data Center Services (DCS) team in Newport Beach, CA. This role can be on-site or hybrid. As the Infrastructure Operations Lead, you will be responsible for the work our team delivers, every day and across every initiative. You will organize and bring structure to both business-as-usual (BAU) operational work and project work across all eight service towers, so the team can reliably balance daily operations with a growing project portfolio. You will build the framework for strong, lasting relationships with application owners at both the leadership and engineer level, keeping infrastructure work aligned with business needs. You will partner with the Project Management Office to make sure enterprise projects are properly resourced, and you will coordinate across every tower, so capacity management, licensing, and forecasting happen on a regular, predictable cadence. This role requires broad operations experience, strong organizational and relationship-building instincts, and the discipline to bring order to a team juggling many priorities at once.

Requirements

BS degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field, or equivalent experience.
8-10+ years of experience in IT infrastructure operations, including experience organizing both operational (BAU) and project-based work for a technical team.
Proven experience building and managing stakeholder relationships with business/application owners at multiple levels, from engineer to executive leadership.
Experience working with a Project Management Office (PMO) or enterprise project intake and resourcing process.
Experience with IT capacity management, licensing management, and forecasting practices across infrastructure domains (compute, storage, backup, etc.).
Working knowledge across virtualization, storage, backup, Windows and Linux server administration, and data center facilities.
Hands-on experience facilitating Scrum or other Agile delivery practices for technical/infrastructure teams.
Strong organizational skills, with the ability to balance and prioritize competing BAU and project demands.
Excellent relationship-building and communication skills, with the ability to represent the team's work to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to lead through high-pressure, high-severity situations.
Demonstrated ability to remove blockers, manage risk, and maintain delivery cadence across multiple concurrent workstreams.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading a large-scale infrastructure modernization program end-to-end.
PMP, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), or equivalent project/program delivery certification.
Experience establishing a formal application-owner engagement or governance model from the ground up.
Familiarity with IT financial management practices, such as licensing true-ups and capacity-driven budgeting.
Experience with ServiceNow, Jira, Azure DevOps, or similar ITSM/Agile tooling.
Familiarity with capacity management and forecasting tools or platforms.

Responsibilities

Own accountability for the coordination, execution and delivery of work across the full Data Center Services portfolio.
Analyze and refine processes for infrastructure capacity management across compute, storage, and related platforms, ensuring capacity planning, utilization reviews, and demand forecasting are performed on a regular, recurring cadence and communicated clearly to leadership.
Formalize and document operational workflows, service catalogs, and runbooks.
Build processes for software and hardware lifecycle management, including license tracking, renewals, reconciliation, and compliance oversight.
Partner with the Data Center Services Manager and Lead Engineers to translate architecture, standards, and automation direction into day-to-day execution plans.
Ensure that the team's business-as-usual (BAU) workload, ticket fulfillment, maintenance, and recurring operational tasks are tracked, prioritized, and completed consistently.
Partner with the Project Management Office (PMO) to ensure enterprise projects receive appropriate Data Center Services resourcing, balancing project demands against BAU capacity.
Coordinate day-to-day execution between the Global MSP and FTE team, ensuring priorities, risks, blockers, decisions, and ownership are clearly understood and actively managed.
Champion consistent use of ServiceNow for BAU support work, ensuring capacity, demand, risk, and delivery commitments remain visible and measurable.
Remove blockers and escalate systemic risks that threaten service levels or project timelines.
Drive consistent adoption of standards, runbooks, and operating procedures across every tower and region.
Track and report on operational health, project delivery status, capacity trends, and licensing posture to the DCS leadership team.
Establish and maintain a framework for building strong relationships with application owners, including a regular cadence of leadership-level touchpoints and engineer-level working relationships.
Serve as the primary point of contact for status, risk, and delivery across every tower and initiative, translating technical execution into business-facing updates.