Director of IT Infrastructure and Operations

The Director, IT Infrastructure and Operations is accountable for the end-to-end reliability, security, performance, and cost effectiveness of the Telesat’s cloud and on-prem networks, hybrid infrastructure platforms, and the datacenter supporting satellite telecommunications operations. This leader establishes and executes the operations strategy for mission-critical, high-availability services across IT operational environments, ensuring strong governance, measurable service levels, and disciplined change/incident/problem management. The Director drives continuous improvement across availability, resiliency, observability, cyber posture, capacity, and automation, while managing vendor relationships and ensuring operational readiness for audits and relevant regulatory requirements.

Key Responsibilities

Operations Leadership

• Own day-to-day IT infrastructure and network operations across cloud and on-prem, ensuring consistent service delivery and customer experience for internal stakeholders.
• Establish and maintain ITIL-aligned practices for incident, problem, change, request, and service level management.
• Define and report on operational KPIs/SLAs/SLOs (availability, latency, MTTR, change success rate, patch compliance, capacity utilization).
• Ensure major incident response, escalation management, post-incident reviews, and remediation planning is in place and governed.

Network Operations (Cloud + On-Prem)

• Provide operational ownership for enterprise and datacenter networking including routing/switching, SD-WAN/VPN, DNS/DHCP/IPAM, load balancing, firewalling, segmentation, and secure remote access.
• Ensure resilient connectivity to critical environments (e.g., NOC/SOC tooling, satellite ground segment interfaces, corporate services, partner interconnects).
• Oversee network performance management, capacity planning, and lifecycle upgrades with minimal downtime.

Infrastructure Operations (Cloud + On-Prem)

• Own operations for compute, storage, and platform services across virtualization, container platforms, backup/restore, identity integration, and monitoring/observability.
• Drive standardized build patterns (gold images, IaC, configuration management) and ensure reliable patching and vulnerability remediation.
• Maintain operational runbooks, platform documentation, and support models across hybrid infrastructure.

Datacenter Operations

• Manage physical datacenter operations including rack/stack, cabling, power/cooling coordination, asset management, hardware break/fix, spares strategy, and access controls.
• Ensure datacenter compliance with safety, security, and operational best practices (e.g., access logs, visitor processes, maintenance scheduling).
• Coordinate with facilities and vendors on maintenance windows and environmental monitoring.

Security, Risk, and Compliance

• Partner with Cyber Security and compliance to implement and operate controls such as network segmentation, privileged access management, logging/monitoring, endpoint hardening, and secure configuration baselines.
• Ensure operational compliance with internal policies and external requirements (e.g., audit evidence, change records, access reviews, retention policies).
• Own infrastructure risk register items and mitigation plans related to uptime, cyber risk, capacity, and vendor dependencies.

Disaster Recovery

• Maintain and test DR capabilities for critical infrastructure services, including backup strategies, recovery procedures, and DR exercises.
• Ensure infrastructure supports recovery objectives (RTO/RPO) aligned to business needs for telco-grade operations.

Financial Management & Vendor Leadership

• Manage annual operating budget and forecast for infrastructure operations (cloud spend, maintenance/support contracts, circuits, licensing).
• Drive cost optimization (FinOps principles) including right-sizing, reserved capacity, storage lifecycle, and contract renegotiations.
• Lead vendor performance management for MSPs, telco carriers, cloud providers, OEMs, and colocation/facilities providers.

Strategy, Roadmap & Continuous Improvement

• Develop the infrastructure and network operations roadmap: modernization, resiliency improvements, automation, observability, standardization, and lifecycle refresh.
• Introduce automation and self-service using IaC and CI/CD where applicable to reduce toil and increase consistency.
• Ensure operational readiness for new services/projects through structured operational acceptance (OLA/SLA, monitoring, runbooks, support handoffs).

Qualifications

• 10+ years in IT infrastructure/network operations, including 5+ years in a leadership role (manager/director level).
• Demonstrated experience operating hybrid environments (cloud + on-prem) with high availability requirements.
• Strong background in enterprise networking (routing/switching, firewalls, VPN/SD-WAN, DNS/DHCP, load balancing).
• Experience with infrastructure platforms (virtualization and/or container platforms), backup/restore, monitoring/observability, and patch/vulnerability management.
• Proven capability in service management practices (incident/change/problem) and major incident processes.
• Experience managing vendors, budgets, and cross-functional stakeholders.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, able to translate technical risk into business impact.
• Experience in telecommunications or satellite environments with 24x7 operations, mission-critical networks, and strict resiliency needs.
• Familiarity with NOC/SOC operations
• Relevant experience with: Azure, Kubernetes, Fortinet, Arista, HPC environments, HPE infrastructure, IAM, AAA
• Experience with Zero Trust and modern network segmentation patterns
• Experience implementing FinOps practices for cloud cost governance

Leadership Competencies

• Ownership & Accountability: drives closure, manages risk, ensures follow-through.
• Customer & Stakeholder Focus: balances speed, cost, and reliability.
• People Leadership: coaches, develops, and retains high-performing teams.
• Operational Excellence: builds predictable, measurable, repeatable operations.
• Crisis Leadership: calm and structured under pressure; leads incident response effectively.
• Strategic Thinking: prioritizes investments based on business impact and risk reduction.