Managing Director of Information Technology Services

Guided by our purpose, core values, and leadership principles, we are creating an airline people love. Our corporate teams set the strategies and operational plans to ensure the success of our company. Whether we use our expertise in accounting, human resources, finance, planning, legal, marketing, or any of our operational divisions, our shared passion for travel and our guests is what motivates us to achieve excellence each day. If you share our passion for creating an airline people love, we want to hear from you.

The Managing Director of Information Technology Services (ITS) Infrastructure is the single accountable executive for all enterprise infrastructure platforms and 24×7 technology operations supporting Alaska Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, and Horizon Air. Reporting to the Vice President of ITS, this role provides executive leadership over all infrastructure operations and engineering domains required to support safe, reliable, and resilient operations. The MD ensures technology platforms operate with continuous high availability across cloud, datacenter, airports, systems operations centers, contact centers, corporate locations.

As a member of the ITS executive leadership team, the MD ITS Infrastructure leads and is accountable for the execution of the enterprise infrastructure strategy, balancing world-class run-the-business operational excellence with platform modernization, cloud migration and risk reduction. This role has complete ownership of ITS Operations outcomes, including infrastructure/cloud reliability, operational resilience, financial performance, and technology risk posture. The MD will partner with the rest of ITS executive leadership team on technology strategy development. The MD serves as a trusted executive partner to enterprise leadership, delivering world-class technology services across all three airlines.

Key Duties

Infrastructure & Operations Leadership

• Define and execute the enterprise ITS Infrastructure and Operations strategy aligned to operational, commercial, and business priorities.

• Lead technology infrastructure teams supporting critical airline functions, including Cloud Platforms, Data Centers, Network Engineering, Compute Platforms, Field Services, Observability, SRE, Production Operations, and the Technology Service Desk.

• Ensure infrastructure services are reliable, resilient, and scalable across airport locations, operational control centers, and enterprise environments.

Operational Reliability, Safety & Resilience

• Own enterprise incident response, disaster recovery, and business continuity capabilities to minimize operational impact and ensure rapid recovery.

• Establish, monitor, and continuously improve availability, performance, and reliability metrics using ITIL, SRE, and observability best practices with clear executive reporting of risks and trends.

• Ensure infrastructure services meet the airline's reliability expectations and support safety critical operational systems.

Technology Modernization & Transformation

• Lead modernization of infrastructure platforms through cloud-first adoption, automation, Infrastructure-as-Code, and operational tooling.

• Partner with cybersecurity, software engineering, common services, and product leaders to enable scalable, performant, and secure hybrid architectures.

• Evaluate emerging technologies to improve operations, efficiency, and resiliency while managing operational risk.

Service Delivery & Regulatory Alignment

• Implement and mature enterprise IT Service Management practices (incident, problem, change, configuration, and asset management).

• Establish world class enterprise monitoring and operations capabilities supporting proactive issue detection and resolution.

• Ensure infrastructure operations align with SOX, PCI, FAA, TSA, and security/privacy/regulatory requirements in partnership with cybersecurity and compliance leaders.

Financial, Vendor & Partner Management

• Own infrastructure and operations budgets, ensuring disciplined financial management and cost optimization.

• Manage strategic partner, vendor and service provider relationships with clear performance expectations and governance.

• Maximize return on technology investments while maintaining operational reliability and service quality.

Executive Partnership & Influence

• Serve as a key advisor to executive leadership on infrastructure/cloud/mobile risk, resiliency, and scalability implications.

• Partner closely with Operations, Commercial, and Corporate leaders to align technology services with airline priorities.

• Represent Alaska Airlines externally in technology forums to share and adopt best practices.

People & Leadership

• Build, lead, and develop high performing infrastructure leadership teams with strong operational discipline and a resilience first mindset.

• Establish a strong operating cadence including operational reviews, incident postmortems, and leadership forums in a 24×7 airline environment.

• Drive succession planning, talent development, and leadership readiness in a 24×7 airline operating environment.

• Singular focus on developing the organization, individual skills and maturity.

• Foster a culture of accountability, collaboration, digital safety, and continuous improvement.

• 10 years of experience in enterprise IT infrastructure, cloud and operations within complex and operationally critical environments.

• 5 years of people leadership experience at an executive level, including multilayer geographically distributed teams.

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, information systems, or related fields, or willingness to attain a Bachelor's degree within six years of start date.

• Proven experience operating and modernizing mission critical infrastructure/cloud with high availability requirements.

• Demonstrated experience leading cloud and hybrid infrastructure transformation initiatives.

• Strong executive presence and ability to influence technology, operations, commercial and corporate functions.

• Proven ability to manage and prioritize conflicting requests from the various business partners.

• Demonstrated ownership of budgets, vendor strategy, and enterprise reliability outcomes.

• High school diploma or equivalent.

• Minimum age 18.

• Authorized to work in the United States.

Preferred

• Airline, transportation, or similar industry experience.

• Deep expertise in hybrid cloud and distributed infrastructure environments.

• Experience with ITIL based operations, SRE, and enterprise observability.

• Master's degree in relevant technical or business discipline or equivalent experience.

Job-Specific Leadership Expectations

• Embody our values to own safety, do the right thing, be caring and kind, and deliver performance.

• Lead with a digital safety-first mindset consistent with airline operational and cultural expectations.

• Operate effectively in high pressure, time critical operational scenarios.

• Demonstrate resilience, composure, and decisiveness during incidents and disruptions.

• Influence and align diverse stakeholders toward enterprise and operational outcomes.

• Embody our values to own safety, do the right thing, be kind-hearted, deliver performance, and be remarkable.

• Create a culture where all employees feel safe and they belong.