Vice President Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering

JOIN THE BEST TEAM IN SPORT & SPIRIT

At Varsity Brands, we believe every student deserves the opportunity to succeed and every educator wants to make a difference. It takes a team to make a real impact, and through our two divisions – BSN SPORTS and Varsity Spirit – and our network of 6,000+ employees and independent representatives, we are proud to partner with a wide range of educational institutions and club and professional sports to transform the student journey in SPORT and SPIRIT.

Location: Onsite 4 days per week at Varsity Brands HQ in Farmers Branch, TX

HOW YOU WILL MAKE AN IMPACT:

Varsity Brands is seeking a transformational technology leader to lead the modernization of the company's Cloud Engineering, Platform Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, Network Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), and Enterprise Infrastructure Operations.

Reporting to the Chief Technology & Product Officer, the VP, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering will define and execute the enterprise infrastructure strategy while ensuring the reliability, security, scalability, and operational excellence of mission-critical technology platforms.

The VP, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering will lead Varsity Brands' multi-year transformation from traditional on-premises infrastructure to a modern AWS-based cloud platform while maintaining highly available enterprise systems throughout the transition. This role is accountable for building an automation-first engineering organization that enables product teams to deliver technology faster, improves customer experience, and supports the company's long-term digital growth.

Success in this role requires a professional who combines deep technical expertise with exceptional leadership, business partnership, and execution capabilities. The ideal candidate demonstrates a customer-first mindset, operates with urgency, proactively leads through ambiguity, builds trusted partnerships across Engineering, Product, Security, Data, AI, Enterprise Applications, and business functions, while ensuring infrastructure strategy aligns with business priorities and customer outcomes. This leader creates clarity where others see uncertainty, removes barriers to execution, and fosters a culture of accountability, ownership, and continuous improvement.

Why This Role Matters

Varsity Brands is modernizing its technology platform to better serve customers, accelerate product delivery, strengthen enterprise reliability, and enable future growth. Cloud infrastructure has become a strategic business capability rather than simply an operational function.

The VP, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering will build the secure, scalable, and highly available technology foundation that enables Engineering, Product, Data, AI, Security, and business teams to innovate with confidence. This leader will also help establish the operating model, cross-functional partnerships, and execution discipline required to translate infrastructure modernization into faster delivery, stronger reliability, and better customer outcomes.

This role matters because it connects enterprise infrastructure strategy directly to business performance, customer experience, and the company’s long-term transformation agenda.

WHAT YOU WILL DO:

Cloud Transformation Leadership

• Define and execute the multi-year cloud migration roadmap

• Lead migration of application workloads from on-premises infrastructure to AWS

• Design enterprise landing zones, networking, IAM, security, governance, and shared platform services

• Establish cloud architecture standards and engineering best practices

• Drive modernization through containers, Kubernetes, serverless, and platform engineering

• Lead the organizational change required to successfully execute the cloud transformation by aligning stakeholders, proactively removing barriers, driving adoption of modern engineering practices, making timely decisions, and maintaining momentum across the enterprise

Data Center Operations

Maintain enterprise-class operations for remaining on-premises systems including:

• SAP ECC

• Nutanix or VMware

• Windows/Linux infrastructure

• Enterprise storage

• Backup & recovery

• Disaster Recovery

• Networking

• Firewalls

• Active Directory

• Monitoring

• Data center capacity planning

Maintain 24x7 operational excellence throughout the migration journey.

AWS Platform Engineering

Own enterprise AWS services including:

• Landing Zones

• Organizations

• VPC Architecture

• IAM

• EKS

• ECS

• EC2

• RDS

• Aurora

• S3

• Lambda

• CloudFront

• Route53

• Bedrock

• CloudWatch

• Systems Manager

• Security Hub

• GuardDuty

• AWS Backup

Infrastructure Automation

Build an Infrastructure-as-Code culture using:

• Terraform

• CloudFormation

• GitHub Actions

• CI/CD

• Automated environment provisioning

• Automated patching

• Policy as Code

• Configuration Management

• Self-service platform capabilities that enable engineering teams to provision infrastructure consistently, securely, and with minimal manual intervention

Reliability Engineering

Build modern Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) capabilities:

• Observability

• Incident Management

• Availability Engineering

• Capacity Planning

• Performance Engineering

• Error Budgets

• Disaster Recovery

• Business Continuity

• Partner with Engineering, Product, Security, and IT Operations leaders to embed reliability, operational readiness, and customer impact into the software delivery lifecycle

Security & Compliance

Partner with Security leadership to ensure:

• Zero Trust Architecture

• IAM governance

• Encryption

• Vulnerability Management

• Cloud Security

• Network Security

• PCI/SOX compliance

• Disaster Recovery testing

Financial Management

Own infrastructure financial performance including:

• Cloud cost optimization (FinOps)

• Data center cost optimization

• Vendor management

• Capacity forecasting

• Budget planning

• AWS Reserved Instances

• Savings Plans

• License optimization

• Balance cost optimization with platform reliability, scalability, security, and long-term business value

Organizational Leadership

Lead teams across:

• Cloud Engineering

• Infrastructure Engineering

• Network Engineering

• Platform Engineering

• DevOps

• Site Reliability Engineering

• Data Center Operations

• Build a culture focused on automation, reliability, operational excellence, and customer-first execution, where leaders demonstrate ownership, move with urgency, build trusted partnerships across teams, proactively resolve ambiguity, collaborate across organizational boundaries, and consistently deliver measurable business outcomes.

Enterprise Operational Leadership

In addition to leading day-to-day Cloud Engineering, Platform Engineering, and Infrastructure Operations, the VP, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering will establish the enterprise operating standards, governance, and engineering discipline that enable Varsity Brands' technology platforms to operate with reliability, security, scalability, and operational excellence.

• Define enterprise standards that guide infrastructure engineering, platform engineering, automation, and operational excellence across the technology organization

• Establish governance that aligns technology investments with business priorities

• Create executive visibility through infrastructure performance metrics, operational reporting, and business-focused dashboards

• Build strong partnerships across Engineering, Product, Security, Data, AI, Enterprise Applications, and business functions

• Remove organizational barriers that slow delivery and improve cross-functional collaboration

• Lead through ambiguity by proactively identifying decisions, resolving dependencies, and driving execution

• Foster a culture of urgency, ownership, customer focus, and continuous improvement

• Build operating rhythms that create transparency, accelerate decision-making, improve cross-functional alignment, and ensure timely execution of strategic priorities

• Ensure infrastructure and platform engineering decisions consistently balance customer impact, operational excellence, engineering productivity, security, and business value

• Partner proactively with business and technology leaders to anticipate organizational needs, align priorities, remove delivery barriers, and enable successful execution of enterprise initiatives

Leadership Responsibilities

The VP, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering will build and lead a high-performing global Infrastructure and Cloud Engineering organization. Responsibilities include:

• Establish a culture focused on automation, engineering excellence, operational discipline, and customer-first execution

• Develop and coach senior technology leaders while building organizational depth, succession capability, and a strong leadership bench

• Champion platform engineering principles that improve engineering productivity through automation, standardization, and self-service capabilities

• Build trusted partnerships with Engineering, Product, Security, Data, AI, Enterprise Applications, and business leaders to accelerate delivery of strategic business priorities

• Establish measurable operating rhythms, performance expectations, and accountability mechanisms that provide transparency into organizational performance and execution

• Create a culture where leaders proactively identify issues, ask questions to resolve ambiguity, and take ownership for driving progress rather than waiting for direction or perfect information

• Model a bias for action by making informed, timely decisions, removing organizational barriers, and ensuring teams execute with urgency and accountability

• Foster an environment where collaboration across functions is expected, rewarded, and viewed as essential to delivering enterprise outcomes rather than individual functional success

• Hold leaders accountable for building strong partnerships, developing high-performing teams, delivering measurable business results, and modeling the leadership behaviors expected across the organization

• Foster a culture where customer impact and business outcomes drive infrastructure and platform decisions

• Lead with transparency, clear communication, and visible engagement, building trust through consistent follow-through and execution

QUALIFICATIONS:

Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

The VP, Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering will demonstrate the following leadership capabilities:

Customer-First Leadership

• Prioritizes infrastructure and platform decisions based on customer experience, business outcomes, and enterprise value

• Aligns technology investments with the needs of Engineering, Product, Security, Data, AI, and business stakeholders

• Builds platform capabilities that improve developer productivity while delivering measurable value for customers, business partners, and the enterprise

Bias for Action

• Demonstrates urgency and consistently drives execution in fast-paced, transformational environments

• Makes informed decisions despite ambiguity and maintains momentum toward strategic objectives

• Proactively seeks clarity, asks thoughtful questions, and removes obstacles rather than waiting for perfect information or direction

Enterprise Leadership

• Builds trusted partnerships across Engineering, Product, Security, Data, AI, Enterprise Applications, and business leadership

• Breaks down organizational silos and aligns diverse stakeholders around shared enterprise priorities

• Thinks and acts beyond functional boundaries, consistently making decisions that optimize enterprise outcomes rather than individual team objectives

Strategic Execution

• Translates long-term infrastructure strategy into measurable business outcomes

• Balances modernization initiatives with operational stability, risk management, and disciplined execution

• Maintains a high standard of execution by establishing clear priorities, holding teams accountable, and ensuring commitments are delivered

Platform & Systems Thinking

• Thinks in platforms, reusable services, and scalable capabilities rather than individual infrastructure components

• Understands the interdependencies between cloud infrastructure, applications, security, data, networking, and enterprise operations

• Simplifies complex technology environments through automation, standardization, and sound architectural decisions

Engineering Leadership

• Builds and develops high-performing engineering organizations through coaching, accountability, and continuous learning

• Creates an inclusive culture focused on ownership, operational excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement

• Develops leaders who proactively solve problems, collaborate effectively, and consistently deliver results

Operational Excellence

• Champions automation-first thinking, operational discipline, reliability, and continuous improvement

• Uses metrics, operational insights, and customer feedback to guide decision-making and improve organizational performance

• Balances speed with operational rigor to deliver sustainable, high-quality outcomes

Executive Communication & Influence

• Communicates complex technical concepts clearly to both technical and business audiences

• Builds credibility through transparency, collaboration, and consistent follow-through

• Influences across all levels of the organization through trust, data-driven decision making, and strong executive presence

Education, Certification and Experience

Required:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology, or a related technical discipline required; equivalent combination of education and relevant experience will also be considered

• 15+ years in enterprise infrastructure leadership

• 8+ years leading AWS platforms

• Led at least one enterprise migration from on-premises to AWS

• Experience operating hybrid cloud environments

• Experience running mission-critical data centers

• Experience supporting enterprise ERP systems

• Experience leading Infrastructure and Platform Engineering teams of 30+ engineers

• Experience influencing executive stakeholders and leading cross-functional initiatives across complex organizations

• Demonstrated experience leading large-scale technology transformation initiatives that required organizational change, cross-functional collaboration, and adoption of new operating models

• Demonstrated success developing senior technology leaders and building high-performing engineering organizations

Preferred:

• Retail or manufacturing

• High-volume eCommerce platforms

• AI/ML platform infrastructure

• Multi-account AWS environments

• FinOps

• Zero Trust Architecture

• Global infrastructure operations

• Experience implementing Platform Engineering practices that improve developer experience through automation, self-service capabilities, and standardized engineering platforms

• SAP ECC infrastructure

• SAP HANA

PHYSICAL REQUIREMENTS:

The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

#LIBD1

Please note this job description is not designed to cover or contain a comprehensive listing of activities, duties or responsibilities required of the employee for this job.

OUR VALUES

Service - We lead with heart. We champion community.

Passion - We love what we do. It fuels our purpose.

Integrity - We do what we promise. We own our actions and decisions.

Respect - We earn it by giving it. Because everyone deserves it.

Innovation - We never stop striving to be better. For ourselves and our community.

Transparency - We are committed to openness and honesty in everything we do.

OUR BENEFITS

We are committed to putting you and your families first. For benefits eligible roles, we offer a variety of choices and costs as well as program enhancements that align with our responsibility to elevate the employee experience. Some of our offerings include:

• Comprehensive Health Care Benefits
• HSA Employer Contribution/ FSA Opportunities
• Wellbeing Program
• 401(k) plan with company matching
• Company paid Life, AD&D, and Short-Term Disability
• Generous My Time Off & Paid Holidays
• Varsity Brands Ownership Program
• Employee Resource Groups
• Access to Financial Coaching and member-owned Credit Union
• St. Jude Partnership & Volunteer Opportunities
• Employee Perks including discounts on personal apparel and equipment!

Varsity Brands companies are equal opportunity employers. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, citizenship, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran’s status, age or disability.