Director of IT Infrastructure & Operations

Santa Clara, CAIT – IT /Full-time /On-siteRole OverviewVelaura AI is seeking an experienced Director of IT Infrastructure & Operations to own IT and infrastructure end to end: the hybrid compute environment our designers depend on, the security program that protects our design IP, the systems that support our development, and the team that runs all of it. You'll lead our existing IT team and grow it.We are looking for someone senior enough to set a 12–24 month architecture direction and hands-on enough to be in the middle of all major IT decisions such as storage scaling, COLO expansion, uptime while managing all vendor negotiation. The ideal candidate will be productive on day one, at cohort scale. Additionally they will:Ensure Compute and storage capacity is planned ahead of demand rather than in reaction to it; queue wait times and storage performance are measured and trending the right way.A new software engineer starts with repo access, a working build environment, and compute quota provisioned before they log in.IAM, endpoint, and access controls are in place and documented well enough to pass a customer security audit.A disaster-recovery plan exists for every system a tape-out depends on, and it has been tested.Hands-on — you'd rather be inside the architecture and the troubleshooting than above itScale-minded — you build for the company we're becoming, not the one we are todayEngineering-oriented — you treat compute availability and storage performance as product-schedule items, because they areSecurity-conscious — you treat design data as the crown jewels and still find ways to say yes to engineersPragmatic — you balance real controls against the speed a fast-growing company needsSteady — outages, security incidents, hiring waves, lab problems, IT scale problems and hard deadlines don't rattle youResponsibilitiesEngineering compute. Partner with engineering leadership to forecast and optimize infrastructure for compute-intensive EDA workloads — RTL, verification, physical design, simulation, tape-out. Manage Linux HPC environments, workload schedulers (LSF, Slurm, or equivalent), and large-scale shared storage. Make sure infrastructure is ready ahead of design freezes and tape-outs, silicon bring up, and customer SDK releases, not during them.Software infrastructure. Own CI/CD at scale, self-hosted runners, and cross-compilation and build farms across multiple target architectures; container and artifact registries, package and dependency mirroring, and reproducible build environments; Kubernetes for internal services and developer tooling; and source control that holds up at 200+ people, with large artifacts and deep submodule trees.Hybrid infrastructure. Architect and operate Azure, Google Cloud, AWS, on-prem servers, virtualization, storage, backups, and both corporate and lab networks. Build the capacity-planning discipline for compute, storage, bandwidth, licenses, and cloud resources — and make the build-vs-buy and cloud-vs-on-prem calls.IP security. Stand up the program that protects RTL, physical-design databases, foundry data, and customer information: IAM with SSO, MFA, RBAC and privileged-access controls; endpoint security, DLP, encryption, vulnerability management; secure remote access; clear boundaries for employees, contractors, and partners. Lead us through customer security reviews and toward SOC 2 / ISO 27001 readiness — you own the outcome and decide the right mix of internal hires, MSPs, and specialist security firms to get there. Own the security controls around what we ship: open-source license compliance and SBOM generation for anything we redistribute, code signing and artifact provenance for SDK and OTA payloads, and secure key handling for signed images.IT Infrastructure and facilities technology. Own the IT infrastructure — including secure segmentation from corporate and engineering environments, lab access controls, test systems, and data collection, and reliable secure remote access for a distributed engineering team — and coordinate with operations on power, cooling, rack space, cabling, and UPS.Employee technology. Build onboarding and offboarding that survives large hiring waves: standard images, role-based access profiles, day-one readiness. Run a service desk with real SLAs that engineers, executives, and lab users all find responsive.Budget and team. Own IT OpEx and CapEx, cloud FinOps (tagging, chargeback, commitments), vendor selection and contracts, and asset management. Lead and grow the existing IT team, and decide the right mix of internal staff, MSPs, and specialists.Required Qualifications10+ years in IT infrastructure, including 5+ leading infrastructure and operations teams.You've scaled an IT environment through rapid organizational growth and can talk candidly about what worked and what didnt.Strong Linux and engineering-compute background; real depth in at least one major cloud (Azure, GCP or AWS) and comfort operating all.Hands on expertise in enterprise networking (firewalls, VPNs, segmentation) and enterprise storage, virtualization, and DR.Hands-on experience implementing IAM, MFA, endpoint management, logging, and enterprise security controls.A track record of building the operational layer: service desk, asset management, budgets, vendor contracts, capacity planningEspecially interesting to us: semiconductor, EDA, hardware, or AI-infrastructure experience; supporting a hardware organization and a software organization; software supply-chain security; familiarity with Cadence / Synopsys / Siemens EDA flows and HPC environments; having supported real tape-out deadlines; securing design IP and foundry data access, or working inside SOC 2, ISO 27001, or NIST frameworks; hardware lab or high-availability data center experience; infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible, Python); CISSP, CISM, CCNP, or a cloud architect certificationIf you meet most of this and the rest looks learnable, we'd love to hear from you.$250,000 - $300,000 a yearCompensation & BenefitsAt Velaura, we believe exceptional talent deserves exceptional rewards. Compensation for this role includes a base salary and very competitive equity compensation, allowing team members to share in the company’s long-term success.The base pay listed represents a good faith estimate that the Company reasonably expects to pay for this position at the time of hire. Actual compensation will depend on multiple factors, including the candidate's skills, qualifications, relevant experience, and geographic location.In addition to base salary and equity compensation, Velaura offers a comprehensive benefits package that may include medical, dental, and vision coverage; paid time off; flexible work arrangements; professional development opportunities; and other benefits designed to support the well-being and growth of our team.Velaura is committed to pay equity and transparency and regularly benchmarks compensation to ensure we remain competitive in the market.Why Velaura?Velaura is building next-generation compute technology for cloud, edge, and Physical AI. Our solutions will enable robots, autonomous systems, drones, and other intelligent machines to operate efficiently in the physical world.This is an opportunity to help build foundational technology at a time when the industry is undergoing fundamental change. You will work alongside experienced leaders, architects, engineers, and operators who have delivered industry-defining products across mobile, cloud, semiconductor, and AI platforms. If you enjoy solving difficult problems, working across disciplines, and helping shape the future of Physical AI, we would love to hear from you.Equal Employment Opportunity and AccommodationsVelaura is an Equal Opportunity Employer that is committed to inclusion and diversity. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability or protected veteran status. We also take affirmative action to offer employmentopportunities to minorities, women, individuals with disabilities, and protected veterans.Velaura is committed to working with qualified individuals with physical or mental disabilities. Applicants who would like to contact us regarding the accessibility of our website or who need special assistance or a reasonable accommodation for any part of the application or hiring process may contact us at: [email protected]. This contactinformation is for accommodation requests only. Evaluation of requests for reasonable accommodation will be determined on a case-by-case basis.We may use artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support parts of the hiring process, such as reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, or assessing responses and identifying potential inconsistencies or verification signals in application materials based on available information. These tools assist our recruitment team but do not replace human judgment. Final hiring decisions are ultimately made by humans. If you would like more information about how your data is processed, please contact us.