Executive Director

We are constantly on the lookout for professionals to fulfil the staffing needs of our clients, and we currently have a job opening that may interest you

Location - Chicago, IL

Required

• 12+ years of experience in infrastructure, platform, or systems architecture, with at least 3 years in a people leadership or team lead role
• Demonstrated experience defining and governing infrastructure architecture standards across multiple domains at organizational scale
• Broad, hands-on knowledge across infrastructure domains:
• cloud (AWS), on-premises data center, networking, compute, storage, and container platforms
• Deep experience with AWS architecture - VPCs, EC2, EKS, MSK, S3, IAM, KMS, Direct Connect, Transit Gateway, and security services
• Strong working knowledge of Kubernetes - cluster architecture, workload design, multi-tenancy, networking (CNI), and operational patterns at scale
• Experience with Apache Kafka as enterprise streaming infrastructure - deployment, operations, and topology design
• Demonstrated experience leading GitOps and infrastructure-as-code programs - Terraform, Helm, ArgoCD, Flux, or equivalent
• Experience with hybrid and on-premises/cloud connectivity architecture - network design, routing,firewalling, and security zoning
• Ability to lead through influence and authority - building alignment across Engineering, Security, Operations, and Governance
• Strong communication skills - able to represent infrastructure strategy to executive leadership and translate architecture decisions into actionable standards for engineering teams

Preferred

• Experience in financial services, particularly regulated environments (SIFMU, clearinghouse, exchange, or bank)
• Familiarity with Regulation SCI, CPMI-IOSCO, or equivalent financial market infrastructure regulatory frameworks and their implications for infrastructure design
• Experience with Apache Flink or equivalent stream processing frameworks in production environments
• Experience with enterprise observability platforms - OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, or equivalent
• Familiarity with low-latency and high-performance computing patterns relevant to risk and clearing workloads AWS Solutions Architect - Professional certification or equivalent
• Experience with enterprise architecture frameworks such as TOGAF

Technical Skills

• Cloud: AWS foundational and advanced services - EC2,
• EKS, MSK, S3, VPC, IAM, KMS, Direct Connect, Transit Gateway, CloudWatch
• Container platforms: Kubernetes (EKS or self-managed),
• Streaming and processing: Apache Kafka, Apache Flink
• GitOps and IaC: Terraform, ArgoCD, Flux, Helm, GitHub Actions or Jenkins
• Networking: routing protocols, firewalling, load balancing,
• Storage: block, object, and file storage architecture; backup and recovery patterns
• Observability: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, or equivalent

Education and/or Experience

• BS degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Mathematics, or a similar technical field, or equivalent practical experience.