The Head of Network Infrastructure Operations is responsible for leading the strategy, design, resilience, and operational excellence of the organization's enterprise network infrastructure.
This role oversees 24/7 Network Operations Center (NOC) functions, ensures high availability and performance of mission-critical environments, and drives modernization through automation, cloud connectivity, and software-defined architectures.
The incumbent provides strategic leadership across engineering, service reliability, security compliance, financial governance, and vendor management to ensure a scalable, secure, and future-ready network ecosystem.
Key Responsibilities
1. Operational Excellence & NOC Leadership
- Lead and oversee 24/7 Network Operations Center (NOC) activities to ensure proactive monitoring and rapid incident response.
- Define and enforce SLAs/SLOs for uptime, latency, availability, and overall network performance.
- Lead high-severity incident management and conduct comprehensive Root Cause Analysis (RCA).
- Drive continuous service improvement initiatives to enhance stability and operational maturity.
- Ensure standardized operational processes, escalation models, and governance frameworks are adhered to.
- Lead engineering teams in high-pressure production environments and time-sensitive operational windows.
2. Network Infrastructure Strategy & Architecture
- Define and execute the long-term network infrastructure roadmap aligned with business and digital transformation strategies.
- Design and oversee scalable architectures across:
- LAN/WAN
- Enterprise Data Centers
- Hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity
- Evaluate and adopt emerging technologies (e.g., SD-WAN, WiFi 6E, SASE) to maintain technical competitiveness.
- Lead hardware lifecycle management, modernization programs, and migration from legacy platforms to modern stacks.
- Ensure high-availability design principles including redundancy, segmentation, and performance optimization.
3. Network Automation & DevNetOps
- Drive automation of network configurations and operational workflows.
- Implement infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD pipelines for controlled network changes.
- Standardize deployments using automation tools such as Ansible, Terraform, and Python.
- Promote NetDevOps principles to enhance agility, reliability, and change governance.
- Implement telemetry-driven monitoring and intelligent analytics for proactive performance management.
4. Security, Risk & Compliance
- Partner with Information Security teams to implement Zero Trust architectures and enforce strong segmentation and firewall policies.
- Ensure compliance with global security and governance standards (e.g., ISO 27001, SOC 2).
- Lead disaster recovery (DR) planning and business continuity testing for network infrastructure.
- Identify, assess, and mitigate infrastructure-related enterprise risks.
- Ensure audit readiness and maintain structured documentation for compliance reviews.
5. Financial & Vendor Governance
- Own and manage the CAPEX and OPEX budgets for network infrastructure operations.
- Optimize costs while maintaining high service resilience and performance standards.
- Lead contract negotiations with ISPs, hardware vendors, and managed service providers.
- Conduct periodic business and performance reviews with key technology partners.
- Evaluate vendor solutions for technical suitability, scalability, security, and commercial value.
Qualifications & Experience
Experience
- 1215 years of progressive experience in Network Engineering and Infrastructure Operations.
- Minimum 5 years in a senior leadership role overseeing enterprise-scale environments.
- Proven experience managing large, multi-vendor enterprise networks.
- Deep exposure to carrier-grade backbone technologies and hybrid-cloud environments.
- Demonstrated experience leading high-performing technical teams.
Education
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related discipline.
Certifications
Mandatory:
Preferred:
- CCNP
- ITIL Foundation
- PMP
- Advanced cloud networking certifications (e.g., Azure, AWS, GCP)
Technical Expertise
- Software-Defined Networking (SDN) architectures (e.g., ACI, NSX, equivalent)
- Routing & Switching (BGP, OSPF, EVPN, MPLS, VXLAN)
- Hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity
- Network virtualization and micro-segmentation
- Infrastructure automation (Python, Ansible, Terraform)
- L4L7 application delivery and traffic engineering
- Zero Trust network security models
- Performance monitoring, deep packet inspection, and telemetry analysis
Leadership Competencies
- Strategic and systems-level thinking
- Strong crisis management and decision-making capability
- Executive communication and stakeholder management
- Vendor negotiation and financial acumen
- Results-driven with strong operational discipline
- Continuous improvement and innovation mindset
