Director, IT Platform Architecture & Engineering

The Director, IT Platform Architecture & Engineering owns the Service Strategy and Service Design phases of HNI’s ITIL-based IT organization for infrastructure - networking, data center, server, storage, end-user compute, M365, and Azure/Oracle cloud. Leading a small team of senior domain architects, the Director defines the future-state environment, sets technical standards, and hands accepted design packages to the engineering and operations teams that build and run them.

The role is central to integrating multiple mature technology environments following significant acquisitions: evaluating what each brings, deciding what the combined enterprise should run, and driving multi-year data center, cloud, network, and end-user consolidation as managed programs. Designs must meet enterprise security requirements before delivery begins. Success demands breadth across infrastructure with hands-on depth, credibility with senior engineers, and the executive presence to defend investment priorities and tradeoffs. TRAVEL & WORKSITE

This position is based at HNI’s Muscatine, Iowa campus and requires on-site presence more than 50% of the time, with additional travel to plants, distribution centers, and data center locations as business needs require. ESSENTIAL DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES Infrastructure Architecture Strategy & Governance

• Define the future-state architecture strategy across networking, end-user technology, cloud, data center, compute, storage, and virtualization.
• Own ITIL Service Strategy and Service Design for infrastructure services - service definitions, design specifications, and capacity, availability, resiliency, and continuity requirements - and deliver accepted design packages to Service Transition and Operations before build begins.
• Set technology standards, design patterns, and multi-year roadmaps; retire technical debt and redundant platforms; evaluate emerging technology for enterprise fit, including capacity and platform architecture for AI and data workloads and the governance of Copilot-class services.
• Build enterprise security requirements into every design - identity, segmentation, zero trust, hardening, logging - obtain cybersecurity sign-off before delivery, and own remediation of audit findings against architecture.
• Extend architecture standards to plant-floor and OT environments, including plant networks, OT/IT convergence, and segmentation of manufacturing systems, in partnership with manufacturing engineering and cybersecurity.
• Design infrastructure so change management, privileged access, and evidence retention satisfy SOX ITGC and external audit testing.
• Hold decision authority on infrastructure architecture and major design changes, weighing scalability, resiliency, supportability, and cost, with input from engineering, operations, cybersecurity, and enterprise architecture.

Post-Acquisition Integration & Technology Rationalization

• Lead the multi-year strategy for integrating and rationalizing multiple enterprise-scale infrastructure environments following acquisitions.
• Decide what to keep, replace, or standardize - leveraging the strongest inherited capabilities and introducing new technology where it better serves the combined enterprise.
• Build transition architectures and roadmaps for data center consolidation, cloud rationalization, network convergence, and end-user consolidation.
• Identify dependencies, risks, and sequencing, and partner with IT leadership to prioritize investment on business value and risk reduction.

Infrastructure Architecture & Engineering Leadership

• Assign domain ownership for architectures, standards, and roadmaps, and ensure the domain strategies add up to one cohesive environment.
• Resolve competing approaches, dependencies, and design conflicts across domains.
• Work with engineering, delivery, and operations to keep designs practical, supportable, and implementable at enterprise scale.
• Own disaster recovery and continuity architecture - RTO and RPO targets set with the business, and failover validated for ERP, plant systems, and core infrastructure.
• Hand off reference architectures, design specifications, and architecture decision records complete enough to execute without rework, and stay engaged through implementation to validate outcomes.

Technology, Vendor & Cost Strategy

• Lead technology evaluation, vendor strategy, and platform selection, partnering with procurement and vendor management on execution.
• Consolidate overlapping vendors and platforms to cut licensing complexity and long-term support cost, and support business cases for major infrastructure investment.
• Provide key input to the multi-year infrastructure capital plan and the operating budget, and defend both in the annual planning cycle.
• Design for a partner-delivered operating model, setting technical standards, service expectations, and quality gates for managed service providers and offshore delivery partners.

Collaboration & Executive Engagement

• Serve as the senior infrastructure architecture authority across IT leadership, engineering, operations, cybersecurity, enterprise architecture, and application teams.
• Communicate strategy, tradeoffs, risks, and investment requirements to executive leadership, and build alignment among stakeholders inheriting different approaches.

• 15+ years in enterprise infrastructure engineering or architecture across cloud, networking, end-user computing, or related domains.
• 5+ years leading architecture or platform engineering teams in a large enterprise, including senior architects and technical individual contributors.
• Prior director- or principal-level ownership of infrastructure architecture and design, with delivered environments and completed programs the candidate can walk through in detail.
• Ownership of ITIL Service Strategy and Service Design, or an equivalent framework, for enterprise infrastructure services - including the standards, reference architectures, and multi-year roadmaps produced.
• Breadth across the infrastructure portfolio with hands-on depth in at least two domains: enough to challenge a design in review and validate it through prototypes and proofs of concept.
• Programs delivered under both Agile and Waterfall, designed to enterprise security and compliance requirements in partnership with cybersecurity.
• Infrastructure supporting manufacturing operations - plant networks, OT/IT convergence, and segmentation of production systems.
• Public-company control environment: infrastructure designed and evidenced for SOX and external audit, and disaster recovery architected to business-set RTO and RPO targets.
• Ownership of a multi-year infrastructure capital plan and operating budget, including delivery through managed service providers or offshore partners.
• Strong documentation and presentation skills, and the organization to run concurrent initiatives against committed dates while holding architects to design standards., * Complex hybrid environments spanning on-premises, cloud, enterprise networks, and end-user technology across geographically distributed sites.
• Post-acquisition technology integration and rationalization of multiple enterprise IT environments.
• Architecture governance where competing technical approaches and stakeholder priorities must be reconciled, with a working grasp of infrastructure economics and lifecycle management.
• Transformation experience in a multi-business-unit enterprise, or in a company integrating acquisitions onto a common platform.

HNI Corporation (NYSE: HNI) is a manufacturer of workplace furnishings and building products, operating under two segments. The workplace furnishings segment is a leading global designer and provider of commercial furnishings, going to market under multiple unique brands. The residential building products segment is the nation’s leading manufacturer and marketer of hearth products.