VP, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering

Varsity Brands•Farmers Branch, TX

6d•Onsite

About The Position

Varsity Brands is seeking a transformational technology leader to lead the modernization of the company's Cloud Engineering, Platform Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, Network Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and Enterprise Infrastructure Operations. Reporting to the Chief Technology & Product Officer, the VP, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering will define and execute the enterprise infrastructure strategy while ensuring the reliability, security, scalability, and operational excellence of mission-critical technology platforms. The VP, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering will lead Varsity Brands' multi-year transformation from traditional on-premises infrastructure to a modern AWS-based cloud platform while maintaining highly available enterprise systems throughout the transition. This role is accountable for building an automation-first engineering organization that enables product teams to deliver technology faster, improves customer experience, and supports the company's long-term digital growth. Success in this role requires a professional who combines deep technical expertise with exceptional leadership, business partnership, and execution capabilities. The ideal candidate demonstrates a customer-first mindset, operates with urgency, proactively leads through ambiguity, builds trusted partnerships across Engineering, Product, Security, Data, AI, Enterprise Applications, and business functions, while ensuring infrastructure strategy aligns with business priorities and customer outcomes. This leader creates clarity where others see uncertainty, removes barriers to execution, and fosters a culture of accountability, ownership, and continuous improvement. Varsity Brands is modernizing its technology platform to better serve customers, accelerate product delivery, strengthen enterprise reliability, and enable future growth. Cloud infrastructure has become a strategic business capability rather than simply an operational function. The VP, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering will build the secure, scalable, and highly available technology foundation that enables Engineering, Product, Data, AI, Security, and business teams to innovate with confidence. This leader will also help establish the operating model, cross-functional partnerships, and execution discipline required to translate infrastructure modernization into faster delivery, stronger reliability, and better customer outcomes. This role matters because it connects enterprise infrastructure strategy directly to business performance, customer experience, and the company’s long-term transformation agenda.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical discipline required; equivalent combination of education and relevant experience will also be considered
15+ years in enterprise infrastructure leadership
8+ years leading AWS platforms
Led at least one enterprise migration from on-premises to AWS
Experience operating hybrid cloud environments
Experience running mission-critical data centers
Experience supporting enterprise ERP systems
Experience leading Infrastructure and Platform Engineering teams of 30+ engineers
Experience influencing executive stakeholders and leading cross-functional initiatives across complex organizations
Demonstrated experience leading large-scale technology transformation initiatives that required organizational change, cross-functional collaboration, and adoption of new operating models
Demonstrated success developing senior technology leaders and building high-performing engineering organizations

Nice To Haves

Retail or manufacturing
High-volume eCommerce platforms
AI/ML platform infrastructure
Multi-account AWS environments
FinOps
Zero Trust Architecture
Global infrastructure operations
Experience implementing Platform Engineering practices that improve developer experience through automation, self-service capabilities, and standardized engineering platforms
SAP ECC infrastructure
SAP HANA

Responsibilities

Define and execute the multi-year cloud migration roadmap
Lead migration of application workloads from on-premises infrastructure to AWS
Design enterprise landing zones, networking, IAM, security, governance, and shared platform services
Establish cloud architecture standards and engineering best practices
Drive modernization through containers, Kubernetes, serverless, and platform engineering
Lead the organizational change required to successfully execute the cloud transformation by aligning stakeholders, proactively removing barriers, driving adoption of modern engineering practices, making timely decisions, and maintaining momentum across the enterprise
Maintain enterprise-class operations for remaining on-premises systems including: SAP ECC, Nutanix or VMware, Windows/Linux infrastructure, Enterprise storage, Backup & recovery, Disaster Recovery, Networking, Firewalls, Active Directory, Monitoring, Data center capacity planning
Maintain 24x7 operational excellence throughout the migration journey.
Own enterprise AWS services including: Landing Zones, Organizations, VPC Architecture, IAM, EKS, ECS, EC2, RDS, Aurora, S3, Lambda, CloudFront, Route53, Bedrock, CloudWatch, Systems Manager, Security Hub, GuardDuty, AWS Backup
Build an Infrastructure-as-Code culture using: Terraform, CloudFormation, GitHub Actions, CI/CD, Automated environment provisioning, Automated patching, Policy as Code, Configuration Management, Self-service platform capabilities that enable engineering teams to provision infrastructure consistently, securely, and with minimal manual intervention
Build modern Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) capabilities: Observability, Incident Management, Availability Engineering, Capacity Planning, Performance Engineering, Error Budgets, Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity
Partner with Engineering, Product, Security, and IT Operations leaders to embed reliability, operational readiness, and customer impact into the software delivery lifecycle
Partner with Security leadership to ensure: Zero Trust Architecture, IAM governance, Encryption, Vulnerability Management, Cloud Security, Network Security, PCI/SOX compliance, Disaster Recovery testing
Own infrastructure financial performance including: Cloud cost optimization (FinOps), Data center cost optimization, Vendor management, Capacity forecasting, Budget planning, AWS Reserved Instances, Savings Plans, License optimization
Balance cost optimization with platform reliability, scalability, security, and long-term business value
Lead teams across: Cloud Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, Network Engineering, Platform Engineering, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, Data Center Operations
Build a culture focused on automation, reliability, operational excellence, and customer-first execution, where leaders demonstrate ownership, move with urgency, build trusted partnerships across teams, proactively resolve ambiguity, collaborate across organizational boundaries, and consistently deliver measurable business outcomes.
Establish the enterprise operating standards, governance, and engineering discipline that enable Varsity Brands' technology platforms to operate with reliability, security, scalability, and operational excellence.
Define enterprise standards that guide infrastructure engineering, platform engineering, automation, and operational excellence across the technology organization
Establish governance that aligns technology investments with business priorities
Create executive visibility through infrastructure performance metrics, operational reporting, and business-focused dashboards
Build strong partnerships across Engineering, Product, Security, Data, AI, Enterprise Applications, and business functions
Remove organizational barriers that slow delivery and improve cross-functional collaboration
Lead through ambiguity by proactively identifying decisions, resolving dependencies, and driving execution
Foster a culture of urgency, ownership, customer focus, and continuous improvement
Build operating rhythms that create transparency, accelerate decision-making, improve cross-functional alignment, and ensure timely execution of strategic priorities
Ensure infrastructure and platform engineering decisions consistently balance customer impact, operational excellence, engineering productivity, security, and business value
Partner proactively with business and technology leaders to anticipate organizational needs, align priorities, remove delivery barriers, and enable successful execution of enterprise initiatives
Establish a culture focused on automation, engineering excellence, operational discipline, and customer-first execution
Develop and coach senior technology leaders while building organizational depth, succession capability, and a strong leadership bench
Champion platform engineering principles that improve engineering productivity through automation, standardization, and self-service capabilities
Build trusted partnerships with Engineering, Product, Security, Data, AI, Enterprise Applications, and business leaders to accelerate delivery of strategic business priorities
Establish measurable operating rhythms, performance expectations, and accountability mechanisms that provide transparency into organizational performance and execution
Create a culture where leaders proactively identify issues, ask questions to resolve ambiguity, and take ownership for driving progress rather than waiting for direction or perfect information
Model a bias for action by making informed, timely decisions, removing organizational barriers, and ensuring teams execute with urgency and accountability
Foster an environment where collaboration across functions is expected, rewarded, and viewed as essential to delivering enterprise outcomes rather than individual functional success
Hold leaders accountable for building strong partnerships, developing high-performing teams, delivering measurable business results, and modeling the leadership behaviors expected across the organization
Foster a culture where customer impact and business outcomes drive infrastructure and platform decisions
Lead with transparency, clear communication, and visible engagement, building trust through consistent follow-through and execution