Director of IT Infrastructure and Operations

Job Overview

The Director, IT Infrastructure and Operations is accountable for the end‑to‑end reliability, security, performance, and cost effectiveness of the Telesat’s cloud and on‑prem networks, hybrid infrastructure platforms, and the datacenter supporting satellite telecommunications operations. This leader establishes and executes the operations strategy for mission‑critical, high‑availability services across IT operational environments, ensuring strong governance, measurable service levels, and disciplined change/incident/problem management. The Director drives continuous improvement across availability, resiliency, observability, cyber posture, capacity, and automation, while managing vendor relationships and ensuring operational readiness for audits and relevant regulatory requirements.

Key Responsibilities

Operations Leadership

• Own day-to-day IT infrastructure and network operations across cloud and on‑prem, ensuring consistent service delivery and customer experience for internal stakeholders.


• Establish and maintain ITIL-aligned practices for incident, problem, change, request, and service level management.


• Define and report on operational KPIs/SLAs/SLOs (availability, latency, MTTR, change success rate, patch compliance, capacity utilization).


• Ensure major incident response, escalation management, post‑incident reviews, and remediation planning is in place and governed.

Network Operations (Cloud + On‑Prem)

• Provide operational ownership for enterprise and datacenter networking including routing/switching, SD‑WAN/VPN, DNS/DHCP/IPAM, load balancing, firewalling, segmentation, and secure remote access.


• Ensure resilient connectivity to critical environments (e.g., NOC/SOC tooling, satellite ground segment interfaces, corporate services, partner interconnects).


• Oversee network performance management, capacity planning, and lifecycle upgrades with minimal downtime.

Infrastructure Operations (Cloud + On‑Prem)

• Own operations for compute, storage, and platform services across virtualization, container platforms, backup/restore, identity integration, and monitoring/observability.


• Drive standardized build patterns (gold images, IaC, configuration management) and ensure reliable patching and vulnerability remediation.


• Maintain operational runbooks, platform documentation, and support models across hybrid infrastructure.

Datacenter Operations

• Manage physical datacenter operations including rack/stack, cabling, power/cooling coordination, asset management, hardware break/fix, spares strategy, and access controls.


• Ensure datacenter compliance with safety, security, and operational best practices (e.g., access logs, visitor processes, maintenance scheduling).


• Coordinate with facilities and vendors on maintenance windows and environmental monitoring.

Security, Risk, and Compliance

• Partner with Cyber Security and compliance to implement and operate controls such as network segmentation, privileged access management, logging/monitoring, endpoint hardening, and secure configuration baselines.


• Ensure operational compliance with internal policies and external requirements (e.g., audit evidence, change records, access reviews, retention policies).


• Own infrastructure risk register items and mitigation plans related to uptime, cyber risk, capacity, and vendor dependencies.

Disaster Recovery

• Maintain and test DR capabilities for critical infrastructure services, including backup strategies, recovery procedures, and DR exercises.


• Ensure infrastructure supports recovery objectives (RTO/RPO) aligned to business needs for telco-grade operations.

Financial Management & Vendor Leadership

• Manage annual operating budget and forecast for infrastructure operations (cloud spend, maintenance/support contracts, circuits, licensing).


• Drive cost optimization (FinOps principles) including right-sizing, reserved capacity, storage lifecycle, and contract renegotiations.


• Lead vendor performance management for MSPs, telco carriers, cloud providers, OEMs, and colocation/facilities providers.

Strategy, Roadmap & Continuous Improvement

• Develop the infrastructure and ne