Head of IT Infrastructure & Operations, Sr. Director (Gaithersburg, MD, US, 2087

Preparedness today, safer tomorrow.
Emergent is a leading public health company that delivers protective and life-saving solutions to
communities around the world.
We go where others won’t, taking on some of the biggest public health challenges to protect and enhance millions of lives, and create a better, more secure world. Here, you will join passionate professionals who advance their scientific, technical and professional skills to develop products designed to protect and enhance life.
Why This Role Matters
At Emergent, our work protects communities and strengthens global health security. As Head of IT Infrastructure & Operations , you will lead the organization’s global technology infrastructure and end-user services.
Reporting to the Chief Information Officer, the Senior Director, Head of IT Infrastructure & Operations leads the strategy, engineering, security, reliability, and day-to-day operation of the company’s global technology infrastructure and end-user services. The role is accountable for resilient, secure, compliant, and cost-effective delivery across hybrid cloud, data centers, networks, compute, storage, workplace technology, service management, collaboration, and infrastructure platforms supporting a global 24/7 business and regulated operations. The position modernizes the infrastructure operating model through automation, observability, data-driven service management, and responsible use of AI, while maintaining disciplined lifecycle, continuity, validation, and vendor governance.
What You'll Do
Reasonable accommodations will be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
Enterprise leadership and strategy
Serve as a member of the CIO’s IT Leadership Team and act as the executive owner for enterprise infrastructure and operations capabilities.
Define and execute a multi-year infrastructure and operations strategy, architecture, investment roadmap, lifecycle plan, and operating model aligned to business priorities, enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, data strategy, and application modernization.
Translate technology choices into clear business outcomes, risks, service commitments, investment requirements, and decision points for senior leaders.
Bring an infrastructure, integration, resiliency, and operability perspective to enterprise programs, acquisitions, site changes, and major technology initiatives.
Hybrid cloud, platforms, and architecture
Lead a fit-for-purpose hybrid cloud strategy spanning public cloud, SaaS, private hosting, and on-premises environments; establish standards for landing zones, connectivity, identity integration, workload placement, scalability, portability, and cost governance.
Own infrastructure architecture and engineering standards for networks, compute, storage, backup, recovery, databases and middleware where assigned, collaboration, telephony, endpoint and workplace platforms, and core operational tooling.
Partner with application, data, security, quality, and business teams to ensure platforms are interoperable, supportable, validated where required, and designed for availability, performance, recoverability, and lifecycle sustainability.
Establish technology currency and technical-debt practices that reduce unsupported platforms, single points of failure, and avoid operational risk.
Operational excellence, service management, and employee experience
Lead global 24/7 infrastructure operations, service desk, workplace services, major incident management, problem management, change enablement, configuration and asset practices, capacity management, and service continuity.
Establish service catalogs, service ownership, service level objectives and agreements, operational level agreements, KPIs, experience measures, and executive reporting that connect service performance to business impact.
Build mature monitoring, observability, event management, and command-center practices to identify degradation early, accelerate restoration, and drive permanent corrective action.
Continuously improve employee technology experience across offices, laboratories, manufacturing and distribution environments, remote work, and executive support.
Cyber resilience, continuity, and compliance
Partner with the Chief Information Security Officer and Quality organization to embed secure-by-design, zero-trust, privileged-access, vulnerability, patching, hardening, segmentation, backup protection, recovery, and logging requirements into infrastructure services.
Own infrastructure disaster recovery and technology continuity capabilities, including business-aligned recovery objectives, dependency mapping, crisis response integration, documented recovery procedures, and regular exercises.
Ensure infrastructure services meet applicable company policies and regulated-life-sciences requirements, including controlled change, documentation, qualification or validation, data integrity, audit readiness, and evidence retention where required.
Ensure operational risks, exceptions, and control gaps are visible, assigned, prioritized, and remediated or formally accepted.
Automation, AI-enabled operations, and data
Develop an automation-first operating model using infrastructure as code, orchestration, self-service, policy as code, automated testing, and repeatable deployment and recovery patterns.
Adopt AI-enabled operations responsibly to improve event correlation, knowledge retrieval, service desk support, capacity forecasting, anomaly detection, and operational decision support, with appropriate human oversight, security, privacy, records, and compliance controls.
Create trusted operational data and dashboards that enable trend analysis, predictive insight, cost transparency, risk prioritization, and measurable continual improvement.
Build workforce capability in cloud, automation, AI, cybersecurity, service reliability, and modern engineering practices.
Financial, supplier, and talent leadership
Own infrastructure and operations financial planning, forecasting, cloud financial management, contract optimization, and investment prioritization.
Lead strategic sourcing activities, including RFPs, RFIs, SOWs, contract and service-level negotiations, supplier performance, concentration risk, exit planning, and third-party resilience.
Lead, develop, and retain a diverse global team; clarify accountabilities, succession, cross-training, on-call expectations, and skills plans across employees, managed service providers, and specialist partners.
Create a culture of ownership, disciplined execution, transparency, collaboration, learning, and continuous improvement.
The above statements describe the general nature of work performed in this job. They are not an exhaustive list of duties, and other duties may be assigned.
What You Bring
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, information systems, business, or a related field, or equivalent relevant experience. Advanced degree is preferred.
Typically 15+ years of progressive technology experience, including 7+ years leading multiple infrastructure, operations, engineering, or service delivery teams in a complex global enterprise.
Demonstrated success leading enterprise-wide infrastructure transformation and operating-model change in a highly regulated environment; life-sciences, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, or manufacturing experience is strongly preferred.
Demonstrated accountability for global, business-critical, 24/7 services delivered through a mix of internal teams, public cloud, SaaS, IaaS, PaaS, colocation, telecommunications, managed services, and outsourcing partners.
Required Skills and Abilities
Executive leadership, business acumen, financial stewardship, and the ability to communicate complex technology choices as business value, risk, resilience, cost, and employee impact.
Deep working knowledge of hybrid cloud, enterprise networking, compute, storage, backup and recovery, identity dependencies, endp