Job Title: Director, Data Center and Network Solutions

Employer: Region 4 Education Service Center

Location: Houston, Texas

Salary Range: $115,983.00 - $136,452.00

Region 4 is seeking a Director for its Data Center and Network Solutions department. This position will be responsible for leading a team in providing efficient and effective operation and delivery of data center services to external and internal customers.

Region 4 Education Service Center is an entrepreneurial organization charged by the Texas Legislature to support statewide goals for school improvement. Region 4 employees enjoy competitive salaries, participation in the Texas Teacher Retirement System pension plan, 403(b)/457 voluntary retirement plan options with employer match, generous health benefits, and a work environment that supports creativity and high performance.

This is an exciting time to join an organization that values and rewards its employees. If you’re skilled in providing leadership and vision for software, hardware, security, and visualization platforms, this is the place for you!

Please visit the Region 4 Career Opportunities site for a complete job description and to submit an application. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Qualifications:

Education
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, technology or related field

Experience

1. Three years’ experience in the supervision and management of a mid-sized or large technology division/department
2. Experience installing server hardware and software in a datacenter environment
3. Recent experience supporting distributed enterprise and critical applications
4. Recent experience with virtualization on multiple platforms including VMWare, AWS, and Azure
5. Experience in developing and maintaining multiple departmental and facility budget and projects simultaneously.
6. Recent experience with current network technologies (e.g. VPN, firewalls, switching, VLANs, QoS, load balancing, MPLS, VoIP)
7. Experience in using and maintaining data security technologies (e.g. IDP, IDS, CASB, Identity management, access control, privileged access, SSO, encryption technologies)

Preferred Experience

1. Advanced technical experience in an educational or public school environment

Special Knowledge and Skills

1. Knowledge of network infrastructure topologies and equipment
2. Knowledge of performance management tools in enterprise networking and application development environments
3. Knowledge of server and desktop operating systems and environments
4. Working knowledge on OSI layer troubleshooting techniques (e.g. NTP, SMTP, UDP, SSL, SSH, SFTP)
5. Working knowledge of database management and development tools
6. Ability to lead diverse teams of people to a common goal
7. Strong organizational, communication, public relations, and interpersonal skills
8. Ability to compose and implement policy and procedures
9. Ability to collect, analyze and interpret data
10. Well-developed negotiation, presentation, and conflict management skills
11. Ability to present technical aspects of projects to administrative personnel and to other non-technical personnel.
12. Demonstrated strong analytical and problem solving skills
13. Vendor and project management skills
14. Solid understanding of industry standard availability and security practices
15. Strong understanding of Windows client-server architecture and networking
16. Expertise with Exchange Server 2010+, backup and recovery procedures and problem resolution operating in hybrid mode in conjunction with Office 365 and/or G-Suite
17. In-depth technical knowledge of Windows' implementation of protocols and services such as AD, FSMO roles, GPO, DHCP, DNS, and Kerberos
18. Scripting skills such as PowerShell, PERL, or Python
19. Exemplary written and oral communication skills

Major Responsibilities:

1. Provide vision for software, hardware, security and virtualization platforms for Region 4, local, state and federal-level projects.
2. Develop and implement enterprise network infrastructure, and database administration teams to troubleshoot potential environment issues in addition to root cause determination and problem resolution.
3. Work to establish and refine repeatable, structured processes and procedures for creating and managing production environments.
4. Perform operational application environment tasks including web and application server configuration changes and application build/deployments.
5. Recommend and approve all hardware installs/upgrades.
6. Provide for the planning, coordination, and implementation of releases, upgrades, or changes to virtualization solutions and the range of products and productivity tools that support the testing and production of those systems.
7. Develop a data center operation strategy, process, and execution to deliver performance, scalability and 100% availability. '
8. Maintain current knowledge of state and federal House and Senate bills and impact to educational process and procedures
9. Maintain departmental cross-trained personnel environment to ensure availability of highly technical personnel
10. Project manage personnel project queues to ensure corresponding deadlines and stakeholder expectations are matched accordingly
11. Manage technical staff and assures that the duties, responsibilities and authority of each team member are clearly defined and effectively communicated.
12. Identify strategic and operating opportunities to reduce network cost, attain or reduce budget levels, increase service levels, network reliability and network operating efficiency.
13. Develop and implement improvements in all areas of network operations including operating processes, service level agreements, configuration management, change management, and root cause determination.
14. Provide technical assistance and services as specified by any applicable federal grant that funds this position.

Supervision/Personnel Management
Supervise all Data and Network Solutions personnel, including completing evaluations and conducting staff training.