Director, Systems Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester

Job description

JOB TITLE Director, Systems Engineering LOCATION Worcester DEPARTMENT NAME Infrastructure Services and Architecture DIVISION NAME Worcester Polytechnic Institute - WPI JOB DESCRIPTION SUMMARY Reporting to the Assistant Chief Technology Officer, Infrastructure Services and Architecture, the Director of Systems Engineering will lead the team responsible for the university's servers, storage, cloud computing, and virtualization, along with infrastructure DevOps, application system and security support, and the technology behind Campus Safety Services (card access, video surveillance, emergency radios, and emergency phones). WPI's information technology environment is highly distributed and diverse. This senior leadership role combines strategic vision and planning with direct, hands-on technical involvement alongside the engineers who report to the role. The Director is responsible for the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of the systems that support the university's educational and operational objectives, and for the reliability of the systems that support campus safety. This position is hybrid, with 4 days on campus in Worcester and 1 day from home. JOB DESCRIPTION Strategic Leadership and Team Development Develop and implement a comprehensive systems strategy aligned with the university's goals and objectives. Collaborate with the Assistant CTO and other senior leaders to prioritize systems initiatives and align them with institutional priorities. Develop staff, set clear performance expectations, and manage workload and operational tasks across the systems team. Work with other groups within IT and other business units to develop solutions for unique system requirements, including technical and regulatory requirements. Systems, Storage, Virtualization, and Cloud Engineering Working directly with the Systems Engineers who report to this role, direct the design, implementation, and management of the university's physical and virtual server infrastructure, enterprise storage and backup platforms, and AWS and Azure cloud environments. Participate actively in solution design, technical review, and implementation planning alongside the engineering team. Ensure efficient use of resources through effective virtualization, capacity planning, and lifecycle management. Lead the evaluation, selection, and adoption of new platform technologies. Ensure new implementations are documented, supportable, and aligned with institutional standards and architecture. Systems Operations and Administration Oversee the team that performs the day-to-day operation and administration of the university's systems environment, ensuring stability, availability, and performance. Ensure all key services, systems, and components are under appropriate monitoring and alerting. Ensure operating system patching, firmware maintenance, and lifecycle activities are performed on a defined and predictable cadence. Ensure documentation, asset inventory, and configuration records are up to date and accurate. Serve as the senior escalation point during major incidents, directing the response, restoring service, and driving root cause analysis and preventive action to completion. Ensure systems incidents and service requests are resolved within the applicable SLA, maintaining open communication with other ITS teams, including the Service Desk. DevOps, Automation, and Process Improvement Manage the DevOps resource supporting the infrastructure organization, directing the work against strategic DevOps and automation requirements from the Assistant CTO. Identify repeated work and recurring requests across all areas reporting to this role. Define, document, and standardize the processes behind that work so it can be measured and performed consistently by both full-time employees and the managed service provider. Identify and prioritize the automation opportunities with the greatest return on team efficiency, and direct their design, build, and adoption. Measure the e