AI Infrastructure Director (Chicago)

Chicago, IL (preferred) | NYC considered | Hybrid onsite | Direct Hire / Permanent

A leading global professional services firm is making one of the most significant AI infrastructure investments in its industry — committing hundreds of millions of dollars over the next several years to build a proprietary, enterprise-grade AI platform. They are hiring an AI Infrastructure Director to architect, lead, and scale that platform.

This is a single-point-of-accountability role at the intersection of cloud infrastructure, AI platform engineering, and enterprise governance. The leader who takes this seat will own the firm’s AI infrastructure footprint end-to-end, from on-premise GPU clusters supporting confidential workloads to enterprise-scale Microsoft Azure AI services. The platform is model-agnostic — the firm is not training foundation models, but is building the secure, governed infrastructure that consumes, isolates, and scales AI workloads on top of existing foundation models.

The role reports into senior firm technology leadership and partners closely with Cloud Engineering, AI Engineering, and executive sponsors of the AI program.

What You’ll Own

• AI Infrastructure Ownership: All AI environments, including on-premise GPU clusters, Azure AI and ML services, and shared AI platform components. Accountability for reliability, scalability, and lifecycle management.
• Azure AI Platform Leadership: Own Azure environments hosting AI and automation workloads, including shared services such as Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Search, and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
• Cross-Team Partnership: Collaborate with Cloud Engineering on landing zones, networking, subscription governance, and service onboarding. Partner with AI Engineering on shared platforms and operating standards.
• Innovation Enablement: Create secure, governed environments that enable rapid experimentation and development for the firm’s AI engineering and innovation teams.
• Team Leadership: Lead a multi-disciplinary engineering organization spanning AI Infrastructure, AI Platform Engineering, Azure AI Operations, and Microsoft 365 Automation. Mentor leaders and engineers and build sustainable career paths.
• Platform Design & Delivery: Oversee the design and deployment of shared and custom AI platforms that accelerate solution delivery while meeting security and governance standards.
• Security & Responsible AI: Operationalize governance, privacy, and Responsible AI standards in partnership with Risk, Security, and Responsible AI teams.
• Operational Excellence: Ensure platform reliability, service-level objectives, incident response readiness, and continuous improvement across production AI environments.
• Strategic Planning & Vendor Management: Manage cloud operating budgets, vendor relationships, and capacity planning across Azure services, GPU infrastructure, and AI tooling.

What You’ll Bring

• Leadership Experience: 12+ years in infrastructure, platform, or cloud engineering at complex enterprise scale, with at least 5 years in senior leadership roles managing managers and multi-team organizations.
• AI Platform Expertise: 5+ years designing, operating, and scaling production AI and ML platforms, including MLOps, CI/CD, Infrastructure-as-Code, and containerized platforms (Kubernetes, Docker).
• Azure at Scale: Deep enterprise-scale expertise with Microsoft Azure, including AI and ML services, networking, identity, security, governance, and cost management.
• Hybrid Infrastructure: Experience integrating and operating on-premise GPU and high-performance computing environments with cloud platforms.
• Operational Accountability: Proven ownership of platform reliability, incident command, and service-level objectives in regulated, compliance-sensitive environments.
• Governance & Risk Awareness: Working knowledge of Responsible AI, AI risk management, and regulatory and compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST AI RMF, etc.).
• Financial & Vendor Acumen: Cloud spend management through FinOps practices and enterprise vendor and contract management experience.
• Executive Presence: Strong communicator with the ability to advise senior leaders and influence cross-functional stakeholders. Comfortable as the single point of accountability for high-visibility platforms.
• Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related field required. Master's or MBA strongly preferred.
• Certifications: Advanced Microsoft Azure certifications (Azure Solutions Architect Expert, DevOps Engineer Expert) strongly preferred.

Strong Plus

• Experience in legal, professional services, financial services, or similarly regulated environments
• Familiarity with legal or professional services technology ecosystems
• Experience with Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Foundry, and AKS at enterprise scale
• Track record of building AI platforms that have moved from POC to production at scale

Compensation

• Competitive base salary in the $300,000 - $335,000
• Comprehensive benefits including healthcare, vision, dental, retirement, and learning and development.

Location & Onsite

• Chicago, IL strongly preferred (most firm technology operations are based in Chicago)
• NYC will be considered for the right candidate
• Hybrid onsite expected

LaSalle Network is an Equal Opportunity Employer m/f/d/v.