Interim Associate CIO

Over the engagement, this leader will reinforce operational discipline by setting clear expectations around accountability, decision-making, and execution, while refining processes that are unclear or impractical. They will lead and coach infrastructure leaders, assess the effectiveness of the current reporting structure, and provide a clear point of view to executive leadership. The ultimate goal is to stabilize operations, restore consistent operating patterns, and prepare the organization for a smooth handoff back to permanent leadership. This person has to be comfortable with a rate of around $125-150/hr dependent on experience.

10+ years of infrastructure leadership experience, including time at the Senior Director, VP, or CIO level, with direct ownership of enterprise IT operations

Experience leading infrastructure organizations of 100+ people, managing managers and senior technical leaders across networking, servers, cloud, data centers, and telephony.

Hands-on accountability for IT operations and reliability, including incident management, outage response, and operational stabilization in high-availability environments

Demonstrated experience designing, enforcing, and correcting operational controls, such as change management, risk-based decision frameworks, and recovery procedures.

Proven track record stepping into unstable or post-incident environments, identifying root causes beyond documentation, and restoring discipline and execution

Excellent communication skills with the confidence and expertise to assess and advise changes and feedback to the CIO

A client is looking for an Interim Associate CIO to sit onsite 4 days per week in New Haven, CT. This individual will step into an interim infrastructure leadership role with direct authority over core infrastructure teams, including networking, servers, cloud, and data center operations. They will lead and coach other leaders, and act as a trusted advisor to the CIO. This person will be highly visible and hands-on, working closely with teams and senior leadership to assess the true operational state of the environment and how well existing processes are actually being followed in practice. They will review recent incidents and failures to understand where controls were bypassed, risks were misjudged, and decision-making broke down, particularly around change control, freeze windows, and incident response. The role requires looking beyond process gaps to identify the cultural and behavioral drivers that lead teams to take shortcuts or operate outside established guardrails.