Infrastructure & Operations Manager

Infrastructure & Operations Manager

Hello, we're Metro! Metro is dedicated to shaping a better future for the greater Portland region. The work the people of Metro do every day benefits the lives of the people who live here, today, and tomorrow.

The Information Technology department is looking for an Infrastructure & Operations Manager to lead the teams that run the technology foundation the rest of the organization relies on. Metro is responsible for regional planning, garbage and recycling, conserving natural areas, providing parks, and operating the Portland Expo Center, the Oregon Convention Center, and the Oregon Zoo. The infrastructure behind it works across the offices, venues, transfer stations, and parks. Providing Metro's variety of services with resilient and reliable technology is a point of pride for our team.

Today Metro runs a hybrid environment: on-premises infrastructure alongside cloud services, hybrid identity, a Microsoft enterprise stack, and endpoints spanning all our locations. The environment is stable and well cared for, built and run by a team with deep knowledge of Metro's systems.

The future of infrastructure and operations is being reshaped by automation and AI, and Metro is investing in that future: in stronger service management, in automation that takes on routine work so people can focus their expertise where it matters most, and in AI-assisted ways of working. Every choice along the way gets weighed by whether it makes the work more reliable and the team more capable.

We're looking for a leader who can take us there. Someone who has strengthened an infrastructure team's practices and readiness for what's next, and who leads as a team player. Someone who takes Metro's goals as their own, partnering with the departments and venues we serve so their needs drive the work, all while keeping our essential technology services on and available. If that sounds like you, we would like to hear from you.

As the Infrastructure & Operations Manager you will:

• Lead Metro's Systems and Support teams, 14 staff across systems administration and help desk, through two direct-report supervisors.
• Keep Metro's systems dependable and secure, so the people of Metro can rely on technology to do their work. Your teams run on-call, and major incident escalation ends with you.
• Strengthen the resilience and availability of Metro's systems, including backup and disaster recovery, so critical services hold up through disruption.
• Mature Metro's IT service management, building the change, incident, and problem practices that make service measurable, responsive, and steadily improving.
• Bring modern practices into everyday operations: infrastructure and configuration as code, observability that catches issues before users report them, and shared documentation that makes systems easier for the whole team to support.
• Own the life cycle and architecture of Metro's systems: deciding whether to modernize, consolidate, migrate, or retire, and where each workload should run.
• Lead the practical, responsible adoption of AI and other innovations in operations, and help your teams build the skills to harness this tool.
• Partner with Metro's cybersecurity leadership to run infrastructure that meets Metro's information security needs.
• Work across Metro's departments and venues, translating technology decisions into terms the people who rely on them can understand and trust.
• Develop and manage the infrastructure and operations budget, set vendor and contracting strategy, and get strong value from Metro's technology investments.
• Keep capacity ahead of demand: knowing what the team should own, what's better handled by vendors and partners, and how the mix should shift as needs change.
• Own Metro's major infrastructure initiatives and capital investments: making the case for them, delivering what was promised, and being accountable for the value they return.

Attributes for success:

• You've led an infrastructure team through modernization, consolidations, or migrations, while the systems stayed up and the work of the organization carried on.
• You have a strong foundation in enterprise systems, networking, storage, and identity, and you're credible with the system administrators who run them.
• You know the Microsoft ecosystem deeply, on-premises and cloud, including licensing and endpoints, and you keep it evolving as the organization's needs change.
• You've made a service operation measurably better, implementing service management practices that made a difference, and it stayed better after you moved on to the next thing.
• You've led through real incidents: keeping your head while systems are down, running a blameless review after, and making fixes that mean the same failure doesn't repeat.
• You find places to automate repetitive work in your team through scripts, pipelines, or configuration, and you can say what you automated first and why, because you'd rather find a better way than to keep doing it manually.
• You scale process to risk: changes with real blast radius get real controls, and routine work doesn't get buried under them.
• You give people ownership, clear what's in their way, and grow their skills, and it shows in your team: people who work well together and like the work.
• You're a strong collaborator, with the teams you work beside and the people who depend on your services, and they bring you into problems early.
• Your organizational skills let you keep daily operations, projects, budget, and vendors all moving, and your team still gets to the quiet yet crucial work like patching, backup testing, and lifecycle replacement.
• You have demonstrated experience with IT vendor, service, and contract management to get the most value for IT services.

Diversity and Inclusion

At Metro, we strive to cultivate diversity, advance equity, and practice inclusion in all of its work. This means attracting and empowering a workforce that is inclusive of a broad range of human qualities. Workplace diversity is both a moral imperative and a business strength, essential to providing quality support and services to our region. Metro's goal is to hire, develop and retain highly skilled and talented individuals across all departments and programs who best reflect the diversity of our community.

To qualify

We will consider any combination of relevant work experience, volunteering, education, and transferable skills as qualifying unless an item or section is labeled required. Please be clear and specific in your application materials on how your background is relevant.

Minimum qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field, and Five (5) years of experience leading or supervising technical staff or teams in IT infrastructure or IT operations, and
• Two (2) years of experience managing IT infrastructure projects or initiatives, such as migrations, consolidations, upgrades, or system implementations, or
• Any combination of education, professional, volunteer and lived experience that provides the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the classification duties and responsibilities.

If this statement is true for you, then you may be ineligible to apply

If you were terminated for cause during any employment with Metro, or resigned in lieu of termination, you may be ineligible for rehire for a minimum of 3 years.

Hybrid Telework

This position is designated as "hybrid telework." You will be required to work onsite and at times have the option to work away from your assigned work location. The specific schedule and balance of onsite and telework will be discussed with the hiring manager at the time of offer. Employees must reside in Oregon or Washington to work at Metro. Please note, the designation of hybrid telework may be subject to change at a future time.

This position supports systems that operate outside business hours, including at Metro's venues. Travel between Metro locations, evening and weekend work, and extended hours may be required.

The teams this position leads provide on-call coverage. During major incidents and emergencies, this position may be required to report onsite on short notice.

Like to have qualifications

You do not need to have the following preferred qualifications/transferable skills to qualify. However, keep in mind we may consider them when identifying the most qualified candidates. Your transferable skills are any skills you have gained through education, work experience, including the military, or life experience that are relevant for this position.

• Training or certification in an IT service management framework or methodology, such as ITIL, COBIT, or an equivalent.
• Experience in government or another highly regulated industry, such as healthcare, utilities, or financial services.
• Experience leading or working within a union-represented workforce.
• Demonstrated use of AI tools in your own work, and experience bringing a team along in adopting them.

Screening and Evaluation