Managing Director - Digital Infrastructure and Reliability

United Airlines•Chicago, IL

2d•$201,400 - $262,250

About The Position

The Managing Director, Digital Infrastructure and Reliability defines and executes a five- to seven-year strategy for secure, resilient, and efficient technology services supporting United’s always-on airline operations. The role oversees infrastructure engineering and operations across on-premises data centers, hybrid cloud, and SaaS environments, including Windows and Linux servers, virtualization, container platforms, enterprise storage and data protection, and network services. The leader will modernize service delivery through full-stack observability, AI-enabled operations, generative AI, and intelligent automation. The role owns the DT Command Center and enterprise incident and problem management, coordinating responses, restoring services promptly, and driving lasting improvements after disruptions. In partnership with cybersecurity, architecture, and engineering leaders, the role embeds Zero Trust, immutable data protection, and validated recovery capabilities into infrastructure services. The position reports directly to the VP, Infrastructure Ops and Engineering and partners with leaders across Digital Technology and United’s operations teams. It also manages strategy, engineering roadmaps, operating plans, budgets, service lifecycles, standards, governance, reliability, security, performance, and cost across the infrastructure portfolio.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology or a related field.
10 or more years of IT experience, including 8 or more years of IT management.
10 or more years of work experience in planning and operations in large and complex corporate computing environments.
6 or more years of experience with process development and continuous improvement principles, with a demonstrable record of implementation.
Experience managing large teams of technical experts and multifunctional teams.
Ability to influence senior-level management and key partners.
Superior client-facing management skills and demonstrated experience managing service support to large clients.
Skills in service support and IT operations, with an interest in operational trend analysis and critical thinking.
Demonstrates an understanding of generative AI capabilities and limitations and effectively uses these tools for research, analysis, content creation, and problem-solving.
Applies critical thinking to validate AI-generated outputs while following organizational policies for responsible AI use, data privacy, and security.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree.
5 or more years of director-level leadership.
ITIL/ITSMF Certification.
Six Sigma certification.
Background in airline operations.

Responsibilities

Develop infrastructure strategy, engineering roadmaps, operating plans, and budgets aligned with business priorities and the DT technology vision.
Direct end-to-end service lifecycle management, from architecture and production readiness through modernization, technology refresh, and retirement.
Establish common standards, governance, ownership, and service expectations across the infrastructure portfolio.
Partner with DT leaders to balance reliability, security, performance, cost, and delivery speed in technology investments and architectural decisions.
Define a generative AI strategy for technology operations, targeting improvements in incident triage, troubleshooting, knowledge discovery, runbook development, and change-risk assessment.
Expand automation across provisioning, configuration, patching, monitoring, remediation, recovery, and service fulfillment using infrastructure as code and policy-based controls.
Introduce self-healing capabilities where appropriate, with testing, auditability, rollback mechanisms, and defined escalation paths.
Measure operational AI and automation outcomes through reduced manual effort, faster restoration, fewer recurring incidents, and improved service quality.
Lead engineering and operations for Windows Server, Linux, virtualization, hybrid cloud, and container platforms, including Kubernetes.
Standardize platform builds, hardening, patching, upgrades, and end-of-support remediation across physical, virtual, and cloud environments.
Manage compute availability, capacity, performance, and workload placement to meet service requirements.
Establish container platform standards for scaling, workload isolation, upgrades, production readiness, and recovery.
Partner with cybersecurity to maintain privileged access controls, endpoint protection, vulnerability remediation, and configuration compliance.
Define support models for foundational platform services, including directory services, identity integration, and time synchronization.
Lead enterprise block, file, and object storage services, including SAN, NAS, software-defined, and cloud-native storage platforms.
Manage storage performance, capacity, connectivity, replication, snapshots, and backup integration to meet workload requirements.
Implement immutable recovery copies using policy-enforced retention and appropriate write-once controls, isolated copies, encryption, and separation of administrative access.
Partner with cybersecurity and business continuity teams to establish ransomware-resilient cyber recovery capabilities and clean recovery procedures.
Validate data integrity and end-to-end restoration against defined recovery time and recovery point objectives.
Optimize storage tiering, retention, utilization, and lifecycle policies to balance protection, performance, and cost.
Lead LAN, WAN, wireless, data center, and cloud networking services across corporate locations, airports, and operational facilities.
Oversee load balancing and application delivery, including traffic distribution, health checks, failover, certificate management, and secure connectivity.
Manage firewall and network security operations with cybersecurity partners, including rule lifecycle management, segmentation, remote access, and threat prevention.
Advance Zero Trust through identity-aware access, least privilege, microsegmentation, and continuous validation; support SASE and secure web access where appropriate.
Maintain enterprise wireless coverage, capacity, authentication, roaming, and interference management for employee and operational devices.
Ensure reliable routing, switching, internet connectivity, DNS, DHCP, and IP address management.
Establish service expectations and escalation paths with telecommunications providers, managed service partners, and technology vendors.
Lead enterprise observability by integrating infrastructure and application telemetry with service dependencies to identify business impact and emerging risks.
Apply AIOps and predictive analytics to reduce alert noise, correlate events, detect anomalies, and accelerate diagnosis and resolution.
Oversee the DT Command Center, major incident response, and problem management, ensuring effective escalation, stakeholder communication, and service restoration.
Drive post-incident reviews, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions with clear accountability for preventing recurrence.
Modernize ITIL-aligned incident, problem, change, configuration, availability, and capacity management practices, incorporating reliability engineering principles.
Establish operational readiness and continuity requirements, including recovery objectives, exercises, and remediation of identified gaps.
Establish service-level objectives and performance measures tied to business impact, reliability, responsiveness, and customer experience.
Use operational trends to prioritize improvements, optimize capacity, reduce complexity, and lower total cost of ownership.
Partner with finance and engineering to strengthen cloud cost management, infrastructure efficiency, and investment prioritization.
Provide DT and business leaders with clear insights into service health, operational risks, financial performance, and roadmap progress.