Senior Director - IT Infrastructure

Benchmark Senior Living is seeking a Senior Director of IT Infrastructure to lead the strategy, design, and operations of our enterprise technology foundation. This is a senior leadership role with direct accountability for infrastructure reliability, security posture, end-user support, and the engineering capability that underpins our communities and corporate systems.

About The Role

You will own the end-to-end infrastructure and support function, from on-premises systems across our community portfolio to cloud platforms, network architecture, endpoint environments, and the service desk team serving associates across all locations. You'll manage a team of engineers and support staff, partner closely with application, security, and BI leadership, and serve as the technical authority on infrastructure investment and design decisions. This role reports to the SVP of Information Technology.

A key expectation of this role is the ability to communicate clearly and credibly across the organization, with frontline support staff, peer directors, operations leaders, and executive stakeholders. The right candidate can explain a network outage to a community executive director and a capital investment case to the CFO with equal confidence.

What You'll Lead

Infrastructure Strategy & Architecture

• Define and own the multi-year infrastructure roadmap, including cloud, data center, and network strategy
• Architect reliable, scalable, and secure environments across corporate and community locations
• Lead IaaS/SaaS platform decisions, vendor evaluations, and technology lifecycle management
• Ensure infrastructure is designed to support AI workloads, data platforms, and emerging operational technology
  
  

Network Engineering & Support

• Own network architecture and operations across all sites (LAN/WAN, SD-WAN, wireless, firewall, and VPN)
• Drive standardization of network design across the community portfolio, balancing reliability with cost efficiency
• Manage network support staff and vendor relationships, ensuring consistent performance and rapid issue resolution
• Lead capacity planning and network refresh cycles in coordination with community operations
  
  

Service Desk & End-User Support

• Lead the service desk function, including staffing, tooling, SLA performance, and associate satisfaction
• Establish and maintain ITSM processes: ticket workflows, escalation paths, knowledge management, and reporting
• Drive a support culture that is responsive, consistent, and oriented toward first-contact resolution
• Use service desk data to identify recurring issues, inform infrastructure decisions, and reduce avoidable volume
  
  

Engineering & Operations

• Lead a team of engineers and support staff across infrastructure, network, and service desk; foster a culture of technical rigor and continuous improvement
• Maintain high availability through sound redundancy, monitoring, and incident response practices
• Drive automation, standardization, and documentation across all infrastructure domains
• Own disaster recovery and business continuity planning and testing
  
  

Security & Compliance

• Partner with IT Security to ensure infrastructure controls align with HIPAA, HITECH, and organizational policy
• Oversee access control, endpoint management, and infrastructure hardening
• Support audit readiness and remediation across all infrastructure-owned controls
  
  

Financial & Vendor Stewardship

• Manage infrastructure budget, vendor contracts, and renewal cycles across engineering, network, and support
• Identify and execute cost optimization opportunities across licensing, hosting, and support agreements
• Build business cases for capital investments and present recommendations to IT and finance leadership
  
  

What You Bring

Leadership & Communication

• Communicates with clarity and credibility at every level, adjusting depth and framing without losing accuracy
• Translates technical risk and investment decisions into business language; comfortable presenting to senior leadership and finance
• Builds trust with non-technical stakeholders by being responsive, direct, and consistent
• Leads teams with different skill profiles and develops people intentionally, from senior engineers to frontline support staff
• Strong project management instincts with the ability to manage competing priorities without losing sight of long-term goals
• Collaborative and comfortable influencing without direct authority across departments
  
  

Experience

• 10 years in IT infrastructure and operations, with at least 3 years in a senior leadership role overseeing multiple functions
• Proven track record managing enterprise environments: on-prem, hybrid, and cloud (Azure preferred)
• Experience leading or transforming a service desk function, including ITSM tool ownership and SLA governance
• Experience in multi-site or distributed organizations; healthcare or senior living a plus
• Strong vendor management experience across hardware, networking, cloud providers, and managed services
  
  

Technical Depth

• Network architecture: LAN/WAN, SD-WAN, wireless, firewall, and VPN
• Server and storage: virtualization (VMware/Hyper-V), SAN/NAS, backup and recovery
• Cloud platforms: Azure or AWS infrastructure services, identity (Entra ID/Active Directory)
• Endpoint and identity management: Intune, MDM, MFA, PAM
• ITSM platforms: ServiceNow or equivalent
• Familiarity with Operational Technology environments (access control, nurse call, building systems) a plus
  
  

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field — or equivalent professional experience.