Managing Director - Digital Infrastructure and Reliability Greater Chicago, IL Area

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Description

United's Digital Technology team is comprised of many talented individuals all working together with cutting-edge technology to build the best airline in the history of aviation. Our team designs, develops and maintains massively scaling technology solutions brought to life with innovative architectures, data analytics, and digital solutions.

Job Overview and Responsibilities

The Managing Director, Digital Infrastructure and Reliability will define and execute a five- to seven-year strategy for secure, resilient, and efficient technology services that support United’s always-on airline operations.

This leader will oversee infrastructure engineering and operations across on-premises data centers, hybrid cloud, and SaaS environments. The portfolio includes Windows and Linux servers, virtualization, container platforms, enterprise storage and data protection, and network services—including wireless, load balancing, firewalls, and network security.

The role will modernize service delivery through full-stack observability, AI-enabled operations, generative AI, and intelligent automation. It also owns the DT Command Center and enterprise incident and problem management, ensuring coordinated response, timely restoration, and lasting improvements following service disruptions.

Working with cybersecurity, architecture, and engineering leaders, this leader will embed Zero Trust, immutable data protection, and validated recovery capabilities into infrastructure services.

This role reports directly to the VP, Infrastructure Ops and Engineering and partners with leaders across Digital Technology and United’s operations teams.

Strategy and Engineering Leadership

Develop infrastructure strategy, engineering roadmaps, operating plans, and budgets aligned with business priorities and the DT technology vision.

Direct end-to-end service lifecycle management, from architecture and production readiness through modernization, technology refresh, and retirement.

Establish common standards, governance, ownership, and service expectations across the infrastructure portfolio.

Partner with DT leaders to balance reliability, security, performance, cost, and speed of delivery in technology investments and architectural decisions.

Generative AI and Intelligent Automation

Define a generative AI strategy for technology operations, prioritizing measurable improvements in incident triage, troubleshooting, knowledge discovery, runbook development, and change-risk assessment.

Expand automation across provisioning, configuration, patching, monitoring, remediation, recovery, and service fulfillment using infrastructure as code and policy-based controls.

Introduce self-healing capabilities where appropriate, with testing, auditability, rollback mechanisms, and defined escalation paths.

Measure outcomes through reduced manual effort, faster restoration, fewer recurring incidents, and improved service quality.

Compute, Hybrid Cloud, and Container Platforms

Lead engineering and operations for Windows Server, Linux, virtualization, hybrid cloud, and container platforms, including Kubernetes.

Standardize platform builds, hardening, patching, upgrades, and end-of-support remediation across physical, virtual, and cloud environments.

Manage compute availability, capacity, performance, and workload placement to meet service requirements.

Establish container platform standards for scaling, workload isolation, upgrades, production readiness, and recovery.

Partner with cybersecurity to maintain privileged access controls, endpoint protection, vulnerability remediation, and configuration compliance.

Define support models for foundational platform services, including directory services, identity integration, and time synchronization.

Storage, Data Protection, and Cyber Recovery

Lead enterprise block, file, and object storage services, including SAN, NAS, software-defined, and cloud-native storage platforms.

Manage storage performance, capacity, connectivity, replication, snapshots, and backup integration to meet workload requirements.

Implement immutable recovery copies through policy-enforced retention and appropriate write-once controls, supported by isolated copies, encryption, and separation of administrative access.

Partner with cybersecurity and business continuity teams to establish ransomware-resilient cyber recovery capabilities and clean recovery procedures.

Validate data integrity and end-to-end restoration against defined recovery time and recovery point objectives.

Optimize storage tiering, retention, utilization, and lifecycle policies to balance protection, performance, and cost.

Network and Security Services

Lead LAN, WAN, wireless, data center, and cloud networking services across corporate locations, airports, and operational facilities.

Oversee load balancing and application delivery, including traffic distribution, health checks, failover, certificate management, and secure connectivity.

Manage firewall and network security operations with cybersecurity partners, including rule lifecycle management, segmentation, remote access, and threat prevention.

Advance Zero Trust through identity-aware access, least privilege, microsegmentation, and continuous validation; support SASE and secure web access where appropriate.

Maintain enterprise wireless coverage, capacity, authentication, roaming, and interference management for employee and operational devices.

Ensure reliable routing, switching, internet connectivity, DNS, DHCP, and IP address management.

Establish service expectations and escalation paths with telecommunications providers, managed service partners, and technology vendors.

Service Reliability and Operational Response

Lead enterprise observability, integrating infrastructure and application telemetry with service dependencies to identify business impact and emerging risks.

Apply AIOps and predictive analytics to reduce alert noise, correlate events, detect anomalies, and accelerate diagnosis and resolution.

Oversee the DT Command Center, major incident response, and problem management, ensuring effective escalation, stakeholder communication, and service restoration.

Drive post-incident reviews, root-cause analysis, and corrective actions with clear accountability for preventing recurrence.

Modernize ITIL-aligned practices for incident, problem, change, configuration, availability, and capacity management, incorporating reliability engineering principles.

Establish operational readiness and continuity requirements, including recovery objectives, exercises, and remediation of identified gaps.

Financial Management and Continuous Improvement

Establish service-level objectives and performance measures tied to business impact, reliability, responsiveness, and customer experience.

Use operational trends to prioritize improvements, optimize capacity, reduce complexity, and lower total cost of ownership.

Partner with finance and engineering to strengthen cloud cost management, infrastructure efficiency, and investment prioritization.

Provide DT and business leaders with clear insights into service health, operational risks, financial performance, and roadmap progress.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications:

Bachelors’ degree in Information Technology or related field

10+ years of IT experience including 8+ years of IT management

10+ years of work experience in large and complex corporate computing environments in planning and operations.

6+ years of experience with process development and continuous improvement principles with a demonstrable record of implementation

Experience managing large teams of technical experts and multi-functional teams. Ability to influence senior level management and key partners

Superior client-facing management skills and demonstrated experience in managing service support to large clients. Key skills in service support and IT operations with an interest in operational trend analysis and critical thinking.

Preferred Qualifications:

Master's degree

5+ years of director level leadership

ITIL/ITSMF Certification

Six Sigma certified

Background in Airline operations

Demonstrates an understanding of the capabilities and limitations of generative AI tools and effectively leverages them to support research, analysis, content creation, and problem-solving. Apply critical thinking to validate AI-generated outputs while adhering to organizational policies for responsible AI use, data privacy, and security.

The base pay range for this role is $201,400.00 to $262,250.00.

The base salary range/hourly rate listed is dependent on job-related, factors such as experience, education, and skills. This position is also eligible for bonus and/or long-term incentive compensation awards.

You may be eligible for the following competitive benefits: medical, dental, vision, life, accident & disability, parental leave, employee assistance program, commuter, paid holidays, paid time off, 401(k) and flight privileges.

United Airlines is an Equal Opportunity Employer. We recruit, employ, train, compensate, and promote without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, veteran status, or any other protected category under applicable law. We provide reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities. To request an accommodation, contact JobAccommodations@united.com