AVP of IT Infrastructure in Albany, New York at First New York Federal Credit Union

The AVP of IT Infrastructure is responsible for the design, performance, security, and resilience of the credit union's network, server, storage, and cloud/hosted environments. Reporting to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), this role ensures the technology foundation is scalable, secure, and highly available to support member-facing and internal systems. The AVP leads a team responsible for infrastructure engineering, systems administration, and end-user support, driving reliability and operational excellence across the technology environment.

Duties & Responsibilities

Leadership & Team Management

• Provide leadership, coaching, and professional development for the IT Infrastructure team, fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration, and member-focused service.
• Set clear performance goals, conduct regular reviews, and manage staffing, scheduling, and workload distribution across the team.
• Partner with the CTO to translate technology strategy into infrastructure roadmaps and operational execution.

Infrastructure Architecture & Engineering

• Lead the design, roadmap, and lifecycle management of network, compute, storage, virtualization, and hybrid/cloud environments.
• Establish infrastructure standards, configuration baselines, and engineering best practices.
• Maintain architectural documentation, runbooks, and standard operating procedures.
• Evaluate and recommend emerging infrastructure technologies that improve reliability, efficiency, and scalability.

Capacity, Performance & Reliability

• Oversee capacity planning, performance tuning, and proactive maintenance to ensure high availability and minimize downtime.
• Implement monitoring and alerting to track infrastructure uptime, performance, and scalability metrics.
• Drive continuous improvement in infrastructure resilience and operational efficiency.

Infrastructure Security & Compliance

• Design and maintain secure infrastructure, including network segmentation, firewall architecture, identity/access infrastructure, and system hardening standards.
• Ensure infrastructure adheres to regulatory requirements (NCUA, GLBA, and applicable examiner expectations) and internal security policies.
• Support audit, examination, and vendor due-diligence activities related to infrastructure.
• Partner with information security stakeholders on vulnerability management, access controls, and incident response.

End-User Support & Service Delivery

• Oversee the Helpdesk function to deliver timely, high-quality support to internal staff across all branches and departments.
• Establish and monitor service-level agreements (SLAs), ticket metrics, and customer satisfaction targets.
• Drive continuous improvement in support processes, self-service tools, and first-contact resolution rates.

Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery

• Design, maintain, and test disaster recovery and business continuity plans at the infrastructure level, including redundancy and high-availability architecture.
• Coordinate operational readiness for outages, incidents, and recovery scenarios.

Vendor & Asset Management

• Manage relationships with infrastructure, hosted-environment, and support vendors, including contracts, performance, and renewals.
• Oversee IT asset lifecycle management, including procurement, inventory, and decommissioning of hardware and software.

Budget & Planning

• Assist in developing and managing the IT Infrastructure budget, including forecasting and cost-control measures.
• Recommend technology investments that improve reliability, efficiency, and scalability.

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, or a related field (or equivalent experience).
• 7+ years of progressive IT infrastructure experience, including 3+ years in a leadership/management role.
• Experience in financial services, banking, or a credit union environment strongly preferred.

Technical Knowledge

• Deep hands-on expertise in enterprise networking, virtualization (VMware/Hyper-V), storage/SAN, Active Directory, and cloud/hosted platforms.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure security architecture and high-availability design.
• Familiarity with IT service management (ITSM) frameworks and helpdesk best practices.
• Understanding of cybersecurity principles and regulatory compliance in a financial institution.

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Proven ability to lead, mentor, and develop high-performing technical teams.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to translate technical concepts for non-technical stakeholders.
• Excellent problem-solving, organizational, and decision-making abilities.
• Customer-service orientation with a commitment to operational excellence.

Preferred Certifications (a plus)

• Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), Microsoft Azure/Server, CISSP, or ITIL.

Work Location: Fully On-Site

Work Schedule: Monday - Friday 8:15am - 5:00pm