IT Infrastructure, Manager

*This position is on-site/hybrid and will report into our New Century, Kansas location*

The Manager of IT Infrastructure is a hands-on, working manager responsible for the reliability, performance, security, and ongoing improvement of Brook & Whittle’s core IT infrastructure services across multiple North American manufacturing facilities. This is a deeply technical role that architects, configures, and troubleshoots core infrastructure alongside the team, not from a distance

Reporting to the Director of IT Service Delivery, this role leads an experienced team of infrastructure professionals responsible for enterprise systems, Microsoft 365, Azure, networking, servers, storage, and foundational technology services across the organization.

The Infrastructure Manager provides technical leadership, operational oversight, and architectural guidance within the infrastructure domain, ensuring reliable, secure, and scalable services that support business operations.

This role supports both corporate-office and manufacturing shop-floor environments, where downtime can directly impact production, shipping, customer service, and revenue.

The ideal candidate is a technically strong infrastructure leader who can guide a team, apply broad technical range to diagnose and resolve problems across diverse and sometimes unfamiliar systems, improve operational maturity, and stay close enough to the technology to make sound practical decisions.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS:

Leadership & Team Management

• Lead, mentor, and develop the IT Infrastructure team across multiple locations, fostering a culture of accountability, continuous improvement, and technical excellence.
• Act as a working manager, balancing people leadership with hands-on technical contributions.
• Set priorities, manage workload, and ensure effective on-call and escalation coverage; participate in the on-call rotation.
• Partner closely with IT Support, Cybersecurity, Software Engineering, and Business stakeholders to deliver reliable infrastructure services.
• Support hiring, onboarding, performance management, and career development of team members.

Infrastructure Strategy & Operations

• Maintain and improve the stability, performance, scalability, and security of enterprise infrastructure platforms.
• Drives architectural decisions and direction within the infrastructure domain; design, implement, and maintain infrastructure standards, documentation, and best practices
• Own technical resolution and operational follow-through of infrastructure-related incidents and service requests, ensuring appropriate prioritization, assignment, escalation, and communication.
• Lead technical coordination during major infrastructure incidents in partnership with IT Service Delivery leadership, ensuring timely root cause analysis, recovery actions, and post-incident follow-up.
• Support high availability and resiliency across multi-site manufacturing operations, including disaster recovery and business continuity planning.
• Manage infrastructure life cycle planning, including upgrades, migrations, refreshes, and decommissioning.
• Plan and execute maintenance activities in a way that respects manufacturing shift schedules and production windows.
• Support IT integration of acquired facilities into the enterprise infrastructure environment.

Technical Responsibilities (Hands-On)

• Serve as a top-tier escalation point for complex technical issues.
• Architect, administer, and troubleshoot:
  • Microsoft 365 (Exchange Online, SharePoint, Teams, Entra ID)
  • Microsoft Azure (IaaS, PaaS, networking, identity, security)
  • Core services: DNS, DHCP, Active Directory / Entra ID
  • Networking: LAN/WAN, firewalls, VPNs, routing, switching (multi-vendor environment)
  • Servers and virtualization (Windows Server, hypervisors)
  • Storage platforms and backup/restore solutions
  • Endpoint and access tooling: Cloudflare Zero Trust, Action1 patch management, CrowdStrike endpoint protection
• Operate within the enterprise ITSM platform and contribute to ITIL-aligned incident, problem, and change management practices.
• Evaluate and implement new technologies to improve reliability, security, and efficiency.

Governance & Security

• Partner with the Director of Cybersecurity on security strategy, risk reduction, and infrastructure-side execution, including patching, vulnerability response, endpoint security tooling, and secure configuration.
• Ensure infrastructure aligns with security, compliance, and operational requirements.
• Collaborate with Cybersecurity on identity, access, network security, and cloud controls.
• Manage infrastructure vendors and service providers, including contracts, renewals, support escalation, and performance against SLAs.
• Participate in budget planning and cost optimization initiatives.
• Maintain balance between security initiatives and operations while focusing on reducing technical debt