Senior Platform Engineering Director

Record your short intro here — tell us about your platform engineering leadership background and the most comparable hypervisor or hyperscaler modernization you’ve led (scope, scale, and outcomes)

Sr. Director of Platform Engineering (Hypervisor & Infrastructure Modernization)

Location: Cincinnati, OH (Onsite — relocation available; local candidates strongly preferred)

Employment Type: Direct Hire

Compensation: $200,000 - $350,000

Benefits: Health, Dental, Vision, 401(k) match, PTO, Paid Holidays, Employee programs (standard corporate package)

Travel: As needed (enterprise sites / data centers)

Start: ASAP

Open Role Due To: Platform modernization initiative (hypervisor replacement + hybrid transformation)

Our fortune 20 client is seeking a Sr. Director of Platform Engineering to provide strategy, vision, leadership, and direction for a highly scaled enterprise infrastructure environment.

This role leads the architecture, engineering, and operations of enterprise compute platforms supporting 70,000+ physical and virtual servers across data centers, stores, fuel distribution, manufacturing/food plants, and e-commerce. The immediate priority is a major hypervisor modernization effort—migrating from VMware ESXi to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) running KVM, with hybrid hyperscaler (Azure/AWS/GCP) experience considered a strong adjacent background if the scale and rigor are comparable.

• Define and lead the vision, strategy, and roadmap for infrastructure/platform engineering to enable growth and digital transformation
• Lead a large-scale hypervisor migration program: including architecture decisions, sequencing, and risk management
• Own platform strategy for bare metal + virtualization: compute, storage, networking, identity, backup, observability, and automation
• Establish and enforce infrastructure standards (global configuration baselines, vendor guidelines, lifecycle management, and security controls)
• Drive operational excellence for HA/DR, capacity planning, performance, patching, incident response, and reliability engineering
• Partner with security, networking, app teams, and enterprise architecture to ensure platforms are secure, resilient, and cost-effective
• Manage large budgets; lead vendor relationships, negotiations, and contract outcomes tied to business value
• Build, coach, and develop leaders and engineers—fostering accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement

• Owns a highly visible modernization initiative replacing a core enterprise hypervisor layer at massive scale
• Direct impact on reliability and performance across stores, distribution, manufacturing, and e-commerce
• Onsite executive leadership role with broad influence across infrastructure strategy, standards, and operations
• Competitive executive compensation (base + bonus + equity) with full benefits

• 10+ years leading large, interdisciplinary infrastructure teams and complex, multi-stakeholder initiatives
• 5+ years delivering innovative infrastructure solutions, with strong understanding of industry trends and competitive landscape
• Proven success driving organizational change, shaping technology vision, and strengthening architecture and operational practices
• Demonstrated ability to build, mentor, and lead high-performing, inclusive teams
• Strong executive communication skills (strategic documentation; presenting technical concepts to non-technical audiences)
• Expertise in business case development, initiative scoping, and program planning with engineering stakeholders
• Deep technical knowledge across enterprise compute platforms, including: hypervisor/virtualization (VMware ESXi/vSphere, KVM, Hyper‑V), bare metal lifecycle, storage (SAN/NAS/object), backup/data protection, virtualization networking fundamentals, and HA/DR design/operations
• Experience managing Cloud and On‑Prem Identity Management environments
• Strong influencing and negotiation skills across all organizational levels and external vendors

• Direct experience leading VMware ESXi → KVM (or ESXi → hyperscaler) migrations at enterprise scale
• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server experience; familiarity with Rancher/Kubernetes (running natively on SLES/Rancher or on VMs)
• Hybrid/multi‑cloud exposure (Azure/AWS/GCP) with understanding of how IaaS replaces/extends on‑prem virtualization patterns
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, IT, or related field