Manager, Technology Infrastructure & AI Systems

OP2 Labs, an 11 X INC 5000 fastest-growing consumer goods company, is seeking an experienced Manager of Technology Infrastructure & AI Systems to join our team. In this critical leadership role, you will own the strategy, operations, and continuous improvement of our IT infrastructure and application landscape while bringing strong hands-on coding capability and advanced practical knowledge of modern AI systems (including large language models such as Grok and Claude).

Your technical depth, leadership, and ability to leverage AI will directly support our rapid growth and commitment to operational excellence.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end management of IT infrastructure (cloud, on-premises, hybrid, networking, identity, endpoint, and core services) and enterprise applications.
• Deploy internally developed advanced AI applications into production.
• Define and execute the technology roadmap for infrastructure reliability, scalability, security, cost optimization, and observability.
• Lead the evaluation, integration, and operationalization of advanced AI tools and platforms (including but not limited to Grok, Claude, and related LLM ecosystems) to enhance internal operations, automation, support, and decision-making.
• Establish governance, security, and responsible-use policies for AI systems while ensuring compliance with relevant standards and regulations.
• Manage infrastructure and application vendors, contracts, SLAs, and performance; drive continuous improvement and cost efficiency.
• Build, mentor, and lead a small high-performing team (or work closely with distributed engineering and operations resources).
• Partner with engineering, product, security, and business stakeholders to align infrastructure and AI capabilities with organizational priorities.
• Maintain hands-on technical credibility: review architectures, contribute to automation and tooling, and stay current with emerging infrastructure and AI technologies.
• Drive incident response, post-incident reviews, capacity planning, and disaster recovery readiness.
• Champion best practices in infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD for infrastructure, monitoring, and AI-assisted operations.

Requirements

• Required Qualifications
• 7+ years of progressive experience in IT infrastructure, application engineering, systems engineering, or platform engineering, with at least 3 years in a leadership or management capacity.
• Deep knowledge of modern IT infrastructure and enterprise applications (cloud platforms such as AWS/Azure/GCP, networking, identity & access management, endpoint management, collaboration suites, and core business applications).
• Demonstrated coding/scripting experience (Python, PowerShell, Bash, Go, or similar) used for automation, tooling, or infrastructure management.
• Advanced practical knowledge of contemporary AI systems, with hands-on experience using and integrating large language models such as Grok and Claude (prompt engineering, API integration, evaluation, safety considerations, and operational deployment).
• Proven ability to translate business needs into reliable, secure, and cost-effective technology solutions.
• Strong leadership, communication, and stakeholder-management skills; able to operate effectively with both technical teams and non-technical executives.
• Experience managing budgets, vendors, and cross-functional initiatives.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience building or operating AI-assisted infrastructure tooling, internal copilots, or automation agents.
• Background in DevOps/SRE practices, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible, etc.), and observability platforms.
• Familiarity with AI governance, model evaluation, and responsible AI frameworks.
• Relevant certifications (cloud architect, security, or infrastructure-related) are a plus.
• Prior experience in a high-growth or technology-driven organization.