Senior Manager IT - Infrastructure Platforms (Remote)

Overview

This is a remote role that may only be hired in the following location(s): Arizona, North Carolina and Texas.

The Senior IT Manager - Infrastructure Platforms is responsible for leading the administration, support, and operational stability of the bank's core infrastructure platforms, including Windows Server, Linux, AIX, enterprise storage, and backup services. This role provides hands-on leadership for a team of infrastructure professionals and ensures that critical systems are secure, highly available, recoverable, and aligned with business, regulatory, and operational requirements.

This position works closely with Information Security, Architecture, Application Support, Network Engineering, Risk, Audit, and business stakeholders to deliver resilient infrastructure services that support First Citizens Bank applications and enterprise operations. The ideal candidate combines strong technical depth with people leadership, operational discipline, and experience in regulated environments.

Responsibilities & Qualifications

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Lead and manage the day-to-day operations of infrastructure teams supporting Windows, Linux, AIX, storage, and backup environments across production, disaster recovery, test, and development platforms.
• Supervise, coach, and develop system administrators and engineers, including workload management, performance feedback, career development, and team planning.
• Ensure high availability and reliability of infrastructure services through proactive monitoring, capacity planning, incident management, root cause analysis, and continuous service improvement.
• Oversee lifecycle management for servers, operating systems, storage platforms, and backup systems, including installation, configuration, patching, upgrades, decommissioning, and hardware/software currency.
• Maintain operational readiness for backup, restore, replication, and disaster recovery capabilities, ensuring recovery objectives are documented, tested, and achievable.
• Partner with cybersecurity and risk teams to implement secure configuration standards, vulnerability remediation, privileged access controls, endpoint hardening, and compliance with internal policies and regulatory expectations.
• Establish and enforce infrastructure standards for system builds, operational procedures, documentation, change controls, and platform governance.
• Coordinate major incident response for supported platforms, providing leadership during outages, service degradation, and recovery events.
• Support audits and examinations by preparing evidence, responding to control inquiries, and remediating identified gaps in a timely manner.
• Manage vendor relationships for infrastructure hardware, software, maintenance, and support services, including issue escalation and service review.
• Contribute to strategic planning for infrastructure modernization, automation, cloud integration where applicable, data center operations, and platform roadmap development.
• Collaborate with application and database teams to support system performance, platform tuning, middleware dependencies, and infrastructure requirements for business initiatives.
• Drive automation and operational efficiency through scripting, configuration management, standardized deployment processes, and reduction of manual support tasks.
• Own capacity and performance management for compute, storage, and backup environments, ensuring sufficient scalability to meet growth and resilience needs.
• Ensure adherence to ITIL-aligned processes for incident, problem, change, request, and configuration management.

Position Specific Skills:
Previous leadership for technical implementation
Knowledge of Standard Development Life Cycles (like Waterfall or Agile)
Knowledge of system and data design

Qualifications:
Minimum Required Education and Experience: Bachelor's Degree and 8 years' experience OR High School Diploma or GED/Equivalent and 12 years' experience in Applications development, analysis or engineering

Preferred Qualifications:

• 7+ years of progressive IT infrastructure experience, including administration or engineering responsibilities across multiple enterprise server platforms.
• 3+ years of leadership or management experience, including direct supervision of technical staff, team coordination, or technical lead responsibility in a complex environment.
• Demonstrated experience supporting Windows Server, Linux, AIX, enterprise storage, and backup platforms in a mid-sized or large enterprise environment.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure operations, platform hardening, backup/recovery processes, disaster recovery, and production support.
• Experience with change management, incident response, root cause analysis, and operational documentation.
• Ability to communicate effectively with technical teams, senior leadership, auditors, vendors, and business stakeholders.
• Experience working in a regulated environment with strong operational controls, documentation standards, and risk management expectations.

Preferred Areas of Experience:

• Experience in the banking, financial services, or other highly regulated industries.
• Experience supporting core banking platforms, payment systems, loan systems, treasury applications, or other business-critical financial workloads.
• Familiarity with regulatory and control frameworks relevant to financial institutions, such as FFIEC guidance, SOX, PCI DSS, GLBA, or internal audit standards.
• Experience with enterprise backup and recovery tools, storage area networks, replication technologies, and data retention controls.
• Experience managing AIX on IBM Power Systems in support of critical applications.
• Experience with virtualization platforms such as VMware or Hyper-V.
• Exposure to infrastructure automation using PowerShell, Python, Ansible, or similar tools.
• Experience with monitoring and observability platforms for infrastructure health, alerting, and performance analytics.
• Familiarity with Active Directory, LDAP, DNS, DHCP, file services, and identity-integrated infrastructure services.
• Experience participating in or leading disaster recovery exercises, cyber recovery planning, and resilience testing.
• Knowledge of hybrid cloud connectivity and infrastructure integration strategies where applicable.

Skills:

• Infrastructure leadership with the ability to balance hands-on technical depth and managerial accountability.
• Strong knowledge of Windows Server administration, including patching, security, troubleshooting, and operational support.
• Strong knowledge of Linux administration across enterprise distributions, including performance tuning, scripting, patching, and security management.
• Working knowledge of AIX administration, system support, and operational best practices.
• Solid understanding of enterprise storage concepts, including SAN/NAS, provisioning, performance, replication, and capacity management.
• Solid understanding of backup and recovery operations, including backup scheduling, retention, restore validation, and disaster recovery alignment.
• Knowledge of system hardening, vulnerability remediation, and infrastructure security controls.
• Strong skills in incident management, problem management, and root cause analysis.
• Ability to create and maintain clear technical documentation, standards, runbooks, and procedures.
• Effective people management, mentoring, and team development skills.
• Strong organizational, prioritization, and decision-making abilities in fast-paced operational environments.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate technical issues for non-technical audiences.
• Ability to work collaboratively across infrastructure, security, application, audit, and business teams.

Reporting Structure

The role will report into the Sr. Director Infrastructure and Operations and will have direct responsibility for system administrators, infrastructure engineers, or platform specialists.

Work Environment

This role may require participation in an on-call rotation, after-hours maintenance activities, disaster recovery testing, and incident response for critical production systems.

Additional Information

Benefits are an integral part of total rewards and First Citizens Bank is committed to providing a competitive, thoughtfully designed and quality benefits program to meet the needs of our associates. More information can be found at

Duties and Responsibilities:

• Lead and manage the day-to-day operations of infrastructure teams supporting Windows, Linux, AIX, storage, and backup environments across production, disaster recovery, test, and development platforms.
• Supervise, coach, and develop system administrators and engineers, including workload management, performance feedback, career development, and team planning.
• Ensure high availability and reliability of infrastructure services through proactive monitoring, capacity planning, incident management, root cause analysis, and continuous service improvement.
• Oversee lifecycle management for servers, operating systems, storage platforms, and backup systems, including installation, configuration, patching, upgrades, decommissioning, and hardware/software currency.
• Maintain operational readiness for backup, restore, replication, and disaster recovery capabilities, ensuring recovery objectives are documented, tested, and achievable.
• Partner with cybersecurity and risk teams to implement secure configuration standards, vulnerability remediation, privileged access controls, endpoint hardening, and compliance with internal policies and regulatory expectations.
• Establish and enforce infrastructure standards for system builds, operational procedures, documentation, change controls, and platform governance.
• Coordinate major incident response for supported platforms, providing leadership during outages, service degradation, and recovery events.
• Support audits and examinations by preparing evidence, responding to control inquiries, and remediating identified gaps in a timely manner.
• Manage vendor relationships for infrastructure hardware, software, maintenance, and support services, including issue escalation and service review.
• Contribute to strategic planning for infrastructure modernization, automation, cloud integration where applicable, data center operations, and platform roadmap development.
• Collaborate with application and database teams to support system performance, platform tuning, middleware dependencies, and infrastructure requirements for business initiatives.
• Drive automation and operational efficiency through scripting, configuration management, standardized deployment processes, and reduction of manual support tasks.
• Own capacity and performance management for compute, storage, and backup environments, ensuring sufficient scalability to meet growth and resilience needs.
• Ensure adherence to ITIL-aligned processes for incident, problem, change, request, and configuration management.

Position Specific Skills:
Previous leadership for technical implementation
Knowledge of Standard Development Life Cycles (like Waterfall or Agile)
Knowledge of system and data design

Qualifications:
Minimum Required Education and Experience: Bachelor's Degree and 8 years' experience OR High School Diploma or GED/Equivalent and 12 years' experience in Applications development, analysis or engineering

Preferred Qualifications:

• 7+ years of progressive IT infrastructure experience, including administration or engineering responsibilities across multiple enterprise server platforms.
• 3+ years of leadership or management experience, including direct supervision of technical staff, team coordination, or technical lead responsibility in a complex environment.
• Demonstrated experience supporting Windows Server, Linux, AIX, enterprise storage, and backup platforms in a mid-sized or large enterprise environment.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure operations, platform hardening, backup/recovery processes, disaster recovery, and production support.
• Experience with change management, incident response, root cause analysis, and operational documentation.
• Ability to communicate effectively with technical teams, senior leadership, auditors, vendors, and business stakeholders.
• Experience working in a regulated environment with strong operational controls, documentation standards, and risk management expectations.

Preferred Areas of Experience:

• Experience in the banking, financial services, or other highly regulated industries.
• Experience supporting core banking platforms, payment systems, loan systems, treasury applications, or other business-critical financial workloads.
• Familiarity with regulatory and control frameworks relevant to financial institutions, such as FFIEC guidance, SOX, PCI DSS, GLBA, or internal audit standards.
• Experience with enterprise backup and recovery tools, storage area networks, replication technologies, and data retention controls.
• Experience managing AIX on IBM Power Systems in support of critical applications.
• Experience with virtualization platforms such as VMware or Hyper-V.
• Exposure to infrastructure automation using PowerShell, Python, Ansible, or similar tools.
• Experience with monitoring and observability platforms for infrastructure health, alerting, and performance analytics.
• Familiarity with Active Directory, LDAP, DNS, DHCP, file services, and identity-integrated infrastructure services.
• Experience participating in or leading disaster recovery exercises, cyber recovery planning, and resilience testing.
• Knowledge of hybrid cloud connectivity and infrastructure integration strategies where applicable.

Skills:

• Infrastructure leadership with the ability to balance hands-on technical depth and managerial accountability.
• Strong knowledge of Windows Server administration, including patching, security, troubleshooting, and operational support.
• Strong knowledge of Linux administration across enterprise distributions, including performance tuning, scripting, patching, and security management.
• Working knowledge of AIX administration, system support, and operational best practices.
• Solid understanding of enterprise storage concepts, including SAN/NAS, provisioning, performance, replication, and capacity management.
• Solid understanding of backup and recovery operations, including backup scheduling, retention, restore validation, and disaster recovery alignment.
• Knowledge of system hardening, vulnerability remediation, and infrastructure security controls.
• Strong skills in incident management, problem management, and root cause analysis.
• Ability to create and maintain clear technical documentation, standards, runbooks, and procedures.
• Effective people management, mentoring, and team development skills.
• Strong organizational, prioritization, and decision-making abilities in fast-paced operational environments.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to translate technical issues for non-technical audiences.
• Ability to work collaboratively across infrastructure, security, application, audit, and business teams.

Reporting Structure

The role will report into the Sr. Director Infrastructure and Operations and will have direct responsibility for system administrators, infrastructure engineers, or platform specialists.

Work Environment

This role may require participation in an on-call rotation, after-hours maintenance activities, disaster recovery testing, and incident response for critical production systems.

Benefits are an integral part of total rewards and First Citizens Bank is committed to providing a competitive, thoughtfully designed and quality benefits program to meet the needs of our associates. More information can be found at