Director, Infrastructure & Security Operations

Director, Infrastructure & Security Operations Reports to: VP, Information Technology Location: Irwindale, CA (Headquarters) or Las Vegas, NV Remote Work: Hybrid remote work arrangement available. If residing in Nevada, must be willing to travel to HQ approximately every 6 weeks. Build the Technology Foundation That Keeps Rize Moving At Rize Credit Union, technology is essential to how we serve our team members, our members, and our communities. We're looking for an experienced Director, Infrastructure & Security Operations to lead the operational systems, teams, and standards that keep our technology environment reliable, secure, scalable, and resilient. This is a leadership role for someone who can translate Technology's strategic priorities into high-performing operational processes, service standards, and infrastructure capabilities that support our growth. You'll build strong operational standards, develop talented technical teams, strengthen infrastructure and security operations, improve resiliency, and create an environment where issues are anticipated, ownership is clear, and problems are followed through to resolution. You’ll work closely with our CTIO, CISO, business leaders, application teams, and strategic partners to ensure Rize has the infrastructure and operational capabilities needed to support a growing financial institution. This is not a software development role . Your focus will be infrastructure, IT operations, security operations, identity and access, disaster recovery, technology support, and operational excellence-not application development, product roadmaps, or business-software delivery. Lead Infrastructure & Technology Operations Own the daily operation, reliability, performance, and lifecycle of Rize's infrastructure and technology services. Lead networks, branch connectivity, telecommunications, internet circuits, wireless, firewalls, VPN, servers, virtualization, storage, cloud infrastructure, and related platforms. Design and implement operational standards, workflows, and performance measures that improve reliability, scalability, and service consistency. Maintain accurate infrastructure diagrams, inventories, procedures, and support documentation. Serve as the senior operational escalation point for outages, incidents, and complex infrastructure issues. Monitor key operational metrics-availability, service levels, incident response, and infrastructure health-and use results to drive continuous improvement. Strengthen Identity, Endpoint & Access Operations Own operational administration of Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Active Directory, Intune, endpoint management, software deployment, and device compliance. Lead identity lifecycle operations, privileged-access administration, access reviews, MFA, service accounts, and least-privilege controls. Ensure timely operating-system, application, firmware, and security patching across managed technology assets. Maintain clear onboarding, offboarding, access-change, and privileged-access procedures in partnership with Human Resources, the CISO, and business owners. Drive Security Operations Lead the operational execution of security controls across infrastructure, endpoints, identity, email, cloud, and network environments. Own vulnerability-remediation coordination, security-tool administration, alert escalation, containment support, and technology recovery. Coordinate technical incident response with the CISO, CTIO, vendors, legal, and business leadership. Ensure security findings, audit issues, penetration-test findings, and control gaps are assigned, tracked, remediated, and validated. Maintain a clear separation of duties: the CISO retains security governance, policy, risk, and independent challenge, while you own operational execution. Ensure Resilience & Disaster Recovery Own infrastructure backup, recovery, redundancy, failover, and disaster-recovery readiness. Coordinate and document recovery testing for critical systems, connectivity, identity, cloud services, and technology vendors. Track recovery objectives, test results, lessons learned, and corrective actions. Reduce single points of failure and keep operational dependencies and recovery procedures documented and current. Build a High-Performing Technology Team Lead and develop infrastructure and support teams with clear expectations for accountability, service, and operational excellence. Develop technical leads and team members through coaching, cross-training, succession planning, and professional development. Set priorities, escalation paths, on-call coverage, and measurable performance standards. Remain capable of hands-on technical problem solving during critical incidents or significant operational events. Foster a responsive, respectful, and business-focused service culture. Manage Vendors, Audit & Operational Governance Manage assigned infrastructure, security-operations, telecommunications, cloud, and support vendors, including performance, escalation, renewals, and service-level accountability. Support technology budgeting, forecasting, licensing, contract planning, asset lifecycle management, and cost optimization. Own preparation of infrastructure and security-operations evidence for internal audit, external audit, NCUA examinations, risk assessments, and control testing. Maintain disciplined change, incident, problem, asset, and operational-risk management practices appropriate for a regulated financial institution. Provide concise reporting to the CTIO on availability, incidents, vulnerabilities, projects, audit issues, risks, vendor performance, and staffing. Partner on Business & Application Support Partner with business and application teams to provide secure environments, access, connectivity, deployment support, monitoring, and production operations for approved systems and services. Support application and service launches through infrastructure readiness, security-control implementation, documentation, and service transition. Participate in technical reviews with application teams to ensure readiness and ongoing operational support. Coordinate with Spruce Technology and other approved partners providing infrastructure, testing, deployment, or operational support. What You’ll Bring We’re looking for a technology leader who combines deep operational knowledge with strong people leadership and business judgment . You’ll ideally bring 10+ years of progressive experience across infrastructure, systems, networking, cloud, endpoint, identity, or security operations, including at least 5 years leading technical teams. Demonstrated ownership of complex, business-critical technology environments with high availability, security, audit, and recovery requirements. Strong working knowledge of Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Active Directory, Intune, Windows infrastructure, networking, firewalls, VPN, cloud platforms, backup, and disaster recovery. Experience with identity and privileged-access management, vulnerability management, endpoint security, monitoring, incident response, and remediation programs. Experience managing technology vendors, contracts, projects, budgets, audits, and operational risk. The ability to communicate clearly with executives, auditors, business leaders, vendors, and other nontechnical stakeholders. Even Better If You Have A bachelor's degree in information technology, computer science, cybersecurity, or a related discipline-or equivalent practical experience. Experience within a credit union, bank, financial institution, or similarly regulated environment. Familiarity with NCUA, FFIEC, GLBA, third-party risk, audit evidence, and financial-institution technology controls. Experience with core banking connectivity, branch technology, telecommunications, Microsoft security tooling, PAM, zero-trust access, or cloud security. Relevant certifications such as CISSP, CISM, CCNP, Microsoft, Azure, AWS, ITIL, or comparable credentials. The Leadership Style We're Looking For The right person for this role takes ownership and follows issues through resolution. You remain calm and decisive during outages, incidents, audits, and competing priorities. You develop people rather than simply directing work, and you build the documentation, cross-training, and succession coverage so the operation isn’t dependent on any one person. You also understand that security, resilience, and auditability are part of everyday technology operations, not separate activities . You explain technical issues in business terms, simplify unnecessarily complicated processes, and approach Technology as a partner to the business-communicating clearly, concisely, and respectfully with technical and nontechnical stakeholders alike. Why Rize? At Rize Credit Union, our mission is to uplift communities through knowledge, access, and care. That mission depends on having strong people and reliable systems behind every interaction. As our Director of Infrastructure & Security Operations, you'll have the opportunity to strengthen the technology foundation behind that mission-developing people, improving operational maturity, increasing resilience, and helping ensure our technology can securely support where Rize is headed next. Compensation The expected pay range for this position is $140,000-$180,000 per year for candidates residing in California. We are also open to candidates residing in Nevada; the applicable pay range may vary based on the candidate's state of residence and geographic market. Actual compensation will be determined based on experience, education, skills, internal equity, geographic location, and other job-related factors. As part of the hiring process, candidates who receive a contingent offer will undergo a background investigation, which may include employment verification, credit review, criminal records search, Social Security verification, and government registry checks. Candidates must also meet eligibility requirements to be bonded under a fidelity bond. Rize Federal Credit Union is an Equal Opportunity Employer. #J-18808-Ljbffr