Sr. Director Infrastructure & Operations

About Our Company

Lids Sports Group is the largest licensed sports retailer in North America, selling fan and fashion-oriented headwear and apparel across the US, Canada, Mexico, Europe, and Australia. Operating out of Indianapolis, IN, our retail stores offer officially licensed headwear and apparel from collegiate and professional sports teams, plus top brands like Nike, New Era, Adidas, and Mitchell & Ness.

We currently operate 1,200+ locations domestically and 50+ internationally, including specialty concept stores for the NBA, NHL, Paris Saint-Germain, and numerous MLB teams. In recent years, Lids has built partnerships with iconic global brands including Marvel, Playboy, and the Harlem Globetrotters, and gained ambassadors like Justin Jefferson, Quavo, and Josephine Skriver – creating a community for both sports fans and fashion lovers.

The company is currently expanding with the goal of becoming the largest licensed brick-and-mortar sports retailer across the globe.

General Position Summary

Reporting to the CIO, the Sr. Director Infrastructure & Operations is responsible for delivering high quality, reliable IT infrastructure and operations to the company. This position is operationally responsible for ensuring the global availability, integrity, and scalability for all IT systems and infrastructure.  This is a key leadership position who will direct the teams in charge of cloud services, unified communications, network services, data center operations, servers and storage platforms, service monitoring, security and help desk. This role also works closely with the CIO and peer IT leaders to design and execute on the company’s technology roadmap. The Sr. Dir Infrastructure & Operations is a forward-looking technology leader who can develop an infrastructure strategy and drive through to execution and support. As a member of the IT senior leadership team, and reporting to the CIO, this is an influential role, developing roadmaps, making trade-off decisions, negotiating and managing vendor contracts, and recruiting, retaining, and developing high performing teams.

Principle Duties and Responsibilities

• Build a culture of innovation and engagement, focusing on strengthening the organization’s employer brand to position Lids as an IT employer of choice.
• Accountable for a high-performing computing infrastructure companywide. This includes, but is not limited to, planning and management of computer operations and production support, systems and database administration, release management, business continuity, network operations, telecom, cloud services, help desk, and field support.
• Collaborate with the CIO and other leaders to develop strategic and tactical solution plans for IT, especially Lid’s future technology infrastructure.
• Conduct strategic and tactical level planning in partnership with peers in IT to develop technical roadmap, and ensure delivery of supportable technology solutions that meet business needs.
• Manage the evaluation and adoption of emerging technologies including cloud, software defined networking, high performance computing, continuous delivery and the latest collaboration technologies.
• Ensure cost-effective design, development, integration, implementation, testing, and maintenance of new services, equipment and systems in support of business objectives and requirements.

Additional Principal Duties and Responsibilities

• Develop and lead a high performing infrastructure engineering and operations team to ensure the reliable delivery of IT services and operations.
• Drive a collaborative culture that values technical depth, accountability, and customer service.
• Establish, maintain and execute operations procedures that leverage efficiencies and best practices.
• Oversee the direction of infrastructure investments in collaboration with team members, the CIO, senior management, and partners.
• Oversee cybersecurity protections on all IT infrastructure resources according to policies and standards.
• Drive the delivery of major technology and infrastructure projects and service management improvements, ensuring that quality, productivity, and ROI goals are achieved.
• Develop a vendor management process, for products and services, that delivers utilization optimization, a best-fit vendor mix, and demonstrable savings.

Job Required Knowledge & Skills

• A minimum of 10 years of experience in technology leadership positions with an emphasis on infrastructure services.
• Substantial experience leading, directing and controlling a complex, highly technical operation or organization.
• Experience migrating IT infrastructure into a cloud environment.
• A high energy, roll-up-the-sleeves attitude with a positive approach to dealing with challenges and changing priorities driven by a growing business.
• A track record of working collaboratively and productively with business partners.
• Deep knowledge of infrastructure, DevOps, technology life cycle management.

Preferred Job Required Knowledge & Skills

• Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science or related field
• Prior management experience required; must have experience in successfully developing talent.
• Ability to collaborate across functions and levels.
• Ability to step into projects already in progress, or in need of rescue, and effectively assume a leadership role.
• Must have a strong sense of urgency and ability to quickly prioritize workload.

Reports To

• Chief Information Officer

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