Director, IT Infrastructure - Five9

We are looking for a Director of IT Infrastructure & Operations, who will be the leader accountable for the global infrastructure and operational backbone of Five9’s internal IT — spanning networking, identity and access management, IT services, cloud services, and the Microsoft 365 platform. This is a strategic leadership role, not a hands-on engineering role. The leader in this seat sets the multi-year roadmap, builds and develops the team that executes it, runs a metrics-driven operation, and partners closely with Security, Engineering, Workplace, and business leaders to ensure Five9 employees have a secure, productive, and reliable computing environment wherever they work.

The successful candidate will bring a rare combination of strategic vision, operational rigor, and people leadership. They will be equally comfortable in a Chief Information Officer (CIO) staff conversation about a three-year platform strategy and in a war-room incident review where minutes matter. They lead with data, drive through process, and develop talent. This role reports to our CIO

Key Responsibilities

• Strategy & Leadership
  •    Own and execute the multi-year strategy and roadmap for global IT infrastructure and operations, aligned to Five9’s business priorities and growth plans.
  •    Serve as a key member of the CIO’s leadership team; contribute to enterprise IT strategy, budget planning, and organizational design.
  •    Build, develop, and retain a high-performing global team of IT leaders, managers, engineers, and administrators across multiple geographies.
  •    Establish a culture of operational excellence, accountability, continuous improvement, and customer service to internal stakeholders.
  •    Partner with the CISO and Security leadership to ensure infrastructure design, identity controls, and operational practices meet Five9’s security and compliance obligations.
  
  
• Networking (Global)
  •    Own the global enterprise network strategy: corporate LAN/WLAN, SD-WAN, remote access (ZTNA/VPN), DNS, and internet egress across all Five9 offices and remote workers.
  •    Ensure network availability, performance, and observability meet defined SLAs across all regions.
  •    Drive modernization initiatives — zero trust networking, secure access service edge (SASE), network automation — with clear business cases and measurable outcomes.
  •    Manage relationships with network carriers, ISPs, and connectivity partners globally.
  
  
• Identity & Access Management
  •    Own the enterprise IAM strategy and platform: single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, lifecycle management, privileged access management, and entitlement governance.
  •    Partner with HR, Security, and application owners to ensure consistent identity governance across SaaS, infrastructure, and internal applications.
  •    Lead modernization toward continuous access evaluation in alignment with zero trust principles.
  
  
• Cloud Services
  •    Own the strategy and operations for corporate IT cloud services.
  •    Drive cloud FinOps discipline: cost visibility, optimization, and forecast accuracy.
  •    Establish cloud governance, security guardrails, and lifecycle management.
  •    Partner with Security and Engineering on shared platforms, identity federation, and secure connectivity between corporate IT and product environments.
  
  
• Microsoft 365
  •    Own the Microsoft 365 platform end-to-end: Exchange Online, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, Intune, Entra ID, Purview, and the broader M365 ecosystem.
  •    Manage licensing strategy, true-ups, and Microsoft Enterprise Agreement relationship in partnership with Procurement.
  •    Evaluate and integrate AI capabilities (e.g., Microsoft Copilot) with appropriate governance, change management, and measurable adoption.
  
  
• Operational Excellence & Financial Management
  •    Define and report on KPIs and SLAs across all functional areas: availability, MTTR, ticket resolution, change success rate, employee satisfaction (CSAT), and cost per user.
  •    Own the annual operating budget and capital plan for infrastructure and operations; manage to budget and deliver business cases for new investment.
  •    Lead vendor management for major partners and service providers; negotiate contracts in partnership with Procurement and Legal.
  •    Establish a structured continuous improvement program; instrument the environment so decisions are made on data, not anecdote.

Required Qualifications:

• 10+ years of progressive IT experience, with 5+ years in leadership roles managing global infrastructure and operations functions.
• Demonstrated experience leading multiple of the in-scope domains — networking, IAM, IT services, cloud services, and Microsoft 365 — at enterprise scale.
• Track record of building, developing, and retaining high-performing global IT organizations, including direct management of managers.
• Deep experience operating in a cloud-first or cloud-heavy environment; comfort with public cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP) and SaaS-based IT operating models.
• Strong working knowledge of modern identity and zero-trust architectures.
• Demonstrated ability to set strategy, build a roadmap, and execute through quarterly milestones with measurable outcomes.
• Excellent communication skills, including the ability to present to executive leadership and external partners.
• Experience operating in a regulated environment (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, etc.) and partnering closely with Security and Compliance functions.
• Experience integrating IT environments through M&A activity.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field, or equivalent experience.

Leadership Attributes:

• Strategic thinker. Sees around corners. Connects technology investment to business outcomes. Builds three-year roadmaps and works backward to quarterly execution.
• Data-driven. Instruments before opinionating. Runs the function on dashboards and KPIs, not intuition. Brings data to every decision.
• Process-oriented. Builds repeatable, scalable processes that survive personnel changes. Believes well-designed process is what lets the organization move faster, not slower.
• Operationally rigorous. Holds high standards for availability, security, and employee experience. Comfortable in incident command and equally comfortable in calm steady-state operations.
• People leader. Hires above their bar, develops their team, and creates the conditions for leaders below them to grow into the next role.
• Collaborative partner. Works through influence as much as authority. Trusted partner to Security, Engineering, HR, Finance, and business leaders.
• Customer-obsessed internally. Treats Five9 employees as customers and measures success by their experience.