IT Associate Director - Automation Engineering

Job Description

OculusIT is seeking an experienced Engineering Leader – Infrastructure Automation to drive a unified automation strategy across network, data center, compute, storage, virtualization, cloud, ITSM, and observability. This leader will play a critical role in transforming infrastructure operations by making automation, engineering discipline, reliability, scalability, and operational excellence the foundation of the infrastructure platform.

Key Responsibilities:

Automation Strategy & Architecture

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• Define and execute an enterprise-wide infrastructure automation strategy.
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• Establish standards and architecture for IaC, CI/CD, configuration management, and automation frameworks .
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• Build a cohesive automation ecosystem across infrastructure domains rather than siloed solutions.
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Platform Engineering & Delivery

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• Lead the design and delivery of automated infrastructure lifecycle processes, including provisioning, patching, scaling, upgrades, and decommissioning .
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• Partner with infrastructure engineering teams to embed automation into day-to-day operations.
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• Drive repeatable, code-based infrastructure patterns and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices.
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Reliability & Operational Excellence

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• Leverage automation to improve:
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• Change reliability and safety
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• Patch and lifecycle compliance
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• Incident response and recovery
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• Infrastructure resiliency and failover
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• Integrate automation with observability and monitoring platforms to generate actionable telemetry.
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Governance & Continuous Improvement

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• Define and track metrics such as automation coverage, patch compliance, and automated change success rate .
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• Establish governance around automation pipelines, infrastructure code quality, security, and tooling standards.
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• Continuously identify opportunities to improve infrastructure efficiency and reliability.
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Leadership & Team Development

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• Build, lead, and develop a high-performing automation/platform engineering team .
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• Coach engineers across different experience levels and promote technical growth.
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• Foster a culture of ownership, collaboration, engineering rigor, knowledge sharing, and continuous modernization .
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Required Qualifications:

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• Proven experience leading infrastructure automation, platform engineering, or DevOps teams in complex environments.
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• Strong technical knowledge across network, compute, storage, virtualization, cloud, and data center infrastructure .
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• Hands-on expertise with Ansible, Terraform, IaC, CI/CD, and configuration management .
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• Demonstrated success implementing automation at scale across multiple infrastructure domains.
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• Strong understanding of ITSM, change/incident/problem management, observability, SRE, and infrastructure reliability .
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• Proven experience managing, mentoring, and developing technical teams.
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• Strong program management, organizational, communication, and presentation skills.
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• Ability to identify complex problems, develop effective solutions, and drive execution.
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• Experience managing multiple complex projects while meeting timelines and objectives.
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Leadership Capabilities:

The ideal leader will work closely with Infrastructure Engineering, TechOps, Information Security, Compliance, and other technology teams .

The candidate should demonstrate:

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• Strong technical communication skills with the ability to bridge engineering teams and senior leadership.
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• Ability to influence and align teams in a decentralized/federated environment .
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• Strong execution and program delivery discipline.
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• Ability to translate strategy and vision into actionable roadmaps.
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• Focus on accountability, measurable outcomes, and business impact .
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• Strong change-management and stakeholder-management capabilities.
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Education & Experience:

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• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field.
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• 8+ years of relevant experience , or equivalent combination of education and experience.
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• Significant experience in infrastructure automation, platform engineering, DevOps, or infrastructure leadership .
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