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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for IT Infrastructure Manager

💰 $ - $

ITInfrastructureManagementOperationsCloud

🎯 Role Definition

An IT Infrastructure Manager oversees the planning, deployment, operation, security, and continuous improvement of an organization’s infrastructure stack, including servers, storage, network, virtualization, cloud services (AWS/Azure/GCP), end‑user computing, backup/DR, monitoring, and infrastructure automation. This role is accountable for availability, performance, capacity, cost control, vendor relationships, compliance, and leading a cross‑functional engineering and operations team to deliver resilient, scalable, and secure infrastructure services.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Systems Engineer / Senior Network Engineer
  • Cloud Engineer / Platform Engineer
  • IT Operations Lead or Technical Team Lead

Advancement To:

  • Director of IT Infrastructure / Head of Infrastructure
  • VP of IT / Chief Information Officer (CIO)
  • Senior Director, Cloud Platforms / Head of Cloud Operations

Lateral Moves:

  • DevOps Engineering Manager / Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Manager
  • Cybersecurity Manager / Security Operations Manager
  • IT Program Manager / IT Service Delivery Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Lead the end‑to‑end design, deployment, and lifecycle management of enterprise infrastructure (on‑premises and cloud), ensuring high availability, redundancy, and scalable architecture aligned with business objectives and SLAs.
  • Define and execute infrastructure roadmap and migration plans for cloud adoption (AWS, Azure, GCP), including lift‑and‑shift, refactor, and hybrid architectures while optimizing cost and performance.
  • Own server, virtualization (VMware, Hyper‑V, KVM) and container platform strategies (Kubernetes, Docker) and manage capacity planning, provisioning, and patching to maintain secure and resilient compute environments.
  • Manage enterprise networking architecture including LAN/WAN, SD‑WAN, routing, switching, wireless, VPN, firewalls, load balancers, and ensure network performance and segmentation for security and compliance.
  • Develop, implement, and maintain backup, recovery and disaster recovery strategies and runbooks; lead DR testing, RTO/RPO validation, and continuous improvement of recovery procedures.
  • Establish and enforce configuration, change, release and patch management processes in line with ITIL best practices to reduce risk and ensure stable production environments.
  • Drive infrastructure automation and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices using tools such as Terraform, Ansible, Chef, or Puppet to increase consistency, repeatability and deployment velocity.
  • Implement and manage centralized monitoring, logging and observability solutions (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK, Datadog, New Relic) to provide proactive alerting, capacity forecasting and performance tuning.
  • Lead vendor selection, contract negotiation, and vendor relationship management for hardware, software, cloud services and MSPs; manage procurement, SLAs, and vendor escalations to control costs and ensure delivery.
  • Own the infrastructure security posture in partnership with security teams — hardening, vulnerability management, firewall policies, IAM, encryption, endpoint protection, network segmentation and incident response readiness.
  • Budget, forecast and manage infrastructure operational and capital expenses, identify cost optimization opportunities across cloud and on‑premise platforms and report ROI and TCO to stakeholders.
  • Implement identity and access management controls (Active Directory, Azure AD, SSO, MFA), RBAC policies and privileged access management to secure admin access and audit trails.
  • Oversee storage, SAN/NAS, object storage (S3, Azure Blob) and backup solutions; plan capacity, performance and lifecycle replacement strategies for storage infrastructure.
  • Manage endpoint and workplace services including imaging, patching, MDM/EMM (Intune, Jamf), and identity lifecycle for corporate devices and remote workforce enablement.
  • Lead, mentor and grow a multi‑disciplinary infrastructure team (systems, network, cloud, storage, backup) including hiring, performance management, skill development and resource planning for coverage and on‑call rotations.
  • Drive cross‑functional projects and programs (data center migrations, cloud migrations, office expansions, mergers & acquisitions) working with application teams, security, compliance and business stakeholders to deliver on time and within scope.
  • Define and maintain infrastructure documentation, runbooks, network diagrams, CMDB updates and SOPs to ensure operational continuity and easier onboarding.
  • Ensure compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements (ISO, SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR) through audits, documentation and remediation of infrastructure findings.
  • Lead incident, problem and post‑mortem management for major infrastructure outages; implement corrective actions and preventative measures to minimize recurrence and impact to business.
  • Implement and maintain robust observability and capacity management practices, continuously tuning systems for cost/performance and providing regular executive reporting on availability, incidents, and metrics.
  • Champion continuous improvement, operational excellence and DevOps collaboration — reduce toil, increase deployment automation, and improve MTTR through tools, processes and cultural changes.
  • Coordinate vendor and third‑party managed services for cloud operations, colocation, telecoms and managed security services to ensure cohesive delivery and single points of escalation.
  • Oversee compliance of backups, retention policies, data lifecycle management and secure disposal of hardware and data in accordance with corporate policy.

Secondary Functions

  • Collaborate with application and development teams to translate business needs into resilient infrastructure designs and deployment pipelines.
  • Provide technical subject matter expertise during procurement and RFP processes; evaluate technical proposals and align vendor solutions to enterprise architecture.
  • Support business continuity planning and collaborate with business units to align infrastructure recovery priorities with critical business services.
  • Participate in security tabletop exercises, incident response drills and remediation planning with the security operations center and compliance teams.
  • Produce executive dashboards, operational metrics and SLA reports for leadership and stakeholders to demonstrate infrastructure health and project status.
  • Train and enable internal IT teams and business users on infrastructure changes, new services and platform capabilities.
  • Maintain a technology watch and pilot emerging solutions (edge computing, SD‑WAN, SASE, multi‑cloud management) to assess benefits and risks for the enterprise.
  • Coordinate cross‑regional infrastructure deployments and ensure consistent configuration, governance, and compliance across multiple sites.
  • Facilitate quarterly capacity reviews, lifecycle replacements and refresh plans for servers, storage, and network equipment.
  • Support procurement and asset management lifecycle including tagging, warranty tracking and disposal in accordance with security and environmental policies.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Infrastructure Architecture & Design — enterprise server, storage, virtualization and cloud architecture (AWS, Azure, GCP).
  • Cloud Platforms & Services — hands‑on experience with EC2, S3, VPC, Azure VM, Azure AD, IAM, managed databases and cloud networking.
  • Virtualization & Containers — VMware, Hyper‑V, KVM and container orchestration (Kubernetes, EKS, AKS, GKE).
  • Networking — routing, switching, SD‑WAN, VPN, BGP, OSPF, firewall configuration (Palo Alto, Cisco ASA/Firepower, Fortinet).
  • Infrastructure Automation & IaC — Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible, Chef, Puppet, PowerShell or Bash scripting.
  • Monitoring & Observability — Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, New Relic, ELK/EFK stacks and APM solutions.
  • Backup & Disaster Recovery — Veeam, Commvault, Rubrik, NetBackup, DR planning and testing.
  • Security & Compliance — network segmentation, IDS/IPS, endpoint protection, vulnerability scanning, encryption, SOC 2/ISO/GDPR knowledge.
  • Identity & Access Management — Active Directory, Azure AD, SSO, MFA, privileged access management.
  • Storage & SAN/NAS — enterprise storage management, iSCSI, Fibre Channel, object storage (S3/Blob).
  • Backup and Retention Policies, Data Lifecycle Management and Secure Disposal processes.
  • Scripting and Automation — Python, PowerShell, Bash for orchestration and operational automation.
  • Configuration Management & CMDB — ITIL practices, ServiceNow or similar ITSM tools.
  • Hardware Lifecycle & Vendor Management — procurement, warranties, vendor escalation and maintenance management.
  • Cost Optimization — cloud cost management and capacity forecasting tools (FinOps best practices).

Soft Skills

  • Leadership and people management — hiring, mentoring, performance management and building high‑performing teams.
  • Strategic Thinking — develop multi‑year infrastructure roadmaps aligned to business goals and digital transformation initiatives.
  • Communication — translate complex technical concepts into clear business impact for executives and non‑technical stakeholders.
  • Project Management — manage cross‑functional programs, vendors, budgets and timelines to successful delivery.
  • Problem Solving and Troubleshooting — root cause analysis and calm incident leadership during outages.
  • Stakeholder Management — influence and negotiate with internal customers and external vendors to prioritize work and resolve disputes.
  • Adaptability — manage competing priorities in fast‑moving environments and pivot during incidents or change events.
  • Operational Discipline — enforce processes, runbooks, SLAs and continuous improvement practices.
  • Collaboration — work closely with security, application, networking, cloud and business teams in matrixed organizations.
  • Decision Making — data‑driven judgement for tradeoffs between cost, performance, security and time‑to‑market.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Computer Engineering, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree (MS) in Computer Science, Information Systems, or MBA for leadership roles.
  • Specialized certifications (ITIL 4 Foundation, PMP) and vendor/cloud certifications.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Information Technology
  • Network Engineering
  • Computer Engineering
  • Systems Administration / Cloud Computing

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range:

  • 5–10+ years in IT infrastructure, systems administration, network engineering or cloud operations; with 2–5 years in a managerial or team lead capacity.

Preferred:

  • 7+ years infrastructure experience and 3+ years managing teams, leading cloud migrations and multi‑site infrastructure programs.
  • Certifications such as: ITIL 4, CISSP, CISM, CCNP, VMware VCP, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Azure Administrator/Architect, PMP.
  • Demonstrated experience with multi‑cloud architectures, enterprise migrations, vendor negotiation, DR planning and compliance audits.
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