Director, IT Infrastructure and Services

The Director, IT Infrastructure and Services provides strategic and operational leadership for the organization’s enterprise infrastructure, networking, database platforms, and IT service management functions. This role ensures technology services are secure, resilient, scalable, cost-effective, and aligned with business and operational objectives. The Director leads the strategy, delivery, lifecycle management, and continuous improvement of infrastructure services while overseeing service reliability, cybersecurity, disaster recovery, vendor performance, and financial stewardship. This position is critical to supporting the organization’s 24/7 operations by ensuring infrastructure services meet demanding availability, performance, and recovery requirements.

Core Responsibilities

• Develop and execute a multi year infrastructure strategy and operational roadmap aligned with enterprise architecture, business priorities, and governance to deliver reliable, scalable, secure, and cost effective technology services.

• Provide strategic leadership for enterprise technology operations, including infrastructure, networking, cloud, database, platform, and IT service management functions, ensuring stable and resilient technology environments.

• Establish and maintain engineering standards, operational practices, and lifecycle management processes that promote consistency, operational excellence, and sustainable infrastructure operations.

• Ensure availability, performance, security, and recoverability of enterprise services through effective monitoring, capacity planning, maintenance, automation, incident response, and continuous improvement.

• Lead IT Service Management and the ServiceNow platform by implementing standardized processes, optimizing workflows, improving service delivery, and leveraging metrics to enhance customer experience and operational performance.

• Direct the delivery and support of enterprise infrastructure, including server, complex, multi layered network environments, database, cloud, storage, and hybrid environments-ensuring operational stability, resilience, and alignment with business needs.

• Strengthen technology resilience through disaster recovery, business continuity, major incident management, and problem management capabilities that minimize operational risk and meet recovery objectives.

• Partner with Enterprise Architecture, Cybersecurity, and business technology teams to implement secure, compliant, supportable solutions aligned with enterprise standards and regulatory requirements, including critical infrastructure cybersecurity requirements.

• Provide executive leadership with meaningful operational insights, service level reporting, performance metrics, capacity forecasts, and technology risk assessments that support informed decision making.

• Develop and manage infrastructure operating and capital budgets, technology investments, contracts, and strategic vendor partnerships to optimize service delivery and maximize business value.

• Build, develop, and lead a high performing technology organization by establishing clear accountability, developing technical talent, fostering collaboration, and ensuring organizational readiness through succession planning.

• Drive continuous improvement across technology services by modernizing infrastructure, reducing technical debt, expanding automation, improving operational efficiency, and enhancing the reliability and scalability of critical systems.

• Bachelor’s Degree in information technology, computer science, engineering, management information systems, or a related discipline, or equivalent relevant experience.

• 10 years or more years of progressively responsible IT experience.

• 5 years or more years of leadership experience managing infrastructure or technology operations teams.

• This position requires moderate travel (approximately 30%)

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in the electric utility, ISO/RTO, energy, financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, or another highly regulated and operationally critical industry.

• Experience with hybrid-cloud architectures and cloud infrastructure services.

• Knowledge of NERC CIP or comparable critical-infrastructure cybersecurity requirements.

• Experience with ITIL, COBIT, NIST, ISO 27001, or related governance frameworks.

• Relevant certifications such as ITIL, ServiceNow, CISSP, CCNP, cloud architecture, database, virtualization, or project-management credentials.

• Master’s degree in a technical or business discipline.

Other Requirements:

• Demonstrated experience managing enterprise-class physical and virtual server environments.

• Significant experience with complex network architectures and highly available network services.

• Experience leading database infrastructure and database administration functions.

• Experience managing IT service management processes and an enterprise ServiceNow environment.

• Experience supporting critical, high-availability, or 24/7 technology operations.

• Experience managing budgets, vendors, licensing agreements, and technology contracts.

• Demonstrated success leading infrastructure modernization, lifecycle-management, or service-improvement initiatives.

SPP is about more than power. We’re about the power of relationships. Our employees have the opportunity to work together to ensure electricity is delivered reliably and affordably to the millions of people living in our service territory. We have been voted one of Arkansas’ Best Places to work by Arkansas Business and we are looking for a member of our team who is passionate about our mission to keep the lights on!

We have a core ideology here at SPP that we stand by: Do the right thing, for the right reason, in the right way.

We believe in supporting our employees through a fantastic benefits package:

• Competitive and transparent pay with bonus opportunities

• Excellent insurance package including three great medical plans to choose from, employer-paid short-term disability, long-term disability, and life insurance