Sr. Manager Cloud and Infrastructure Engineering

Job Description
Lucas James Talent Partners is recruiting on behalf of UL Research Institutes and UL Standards & Engagement. We have an exciting opportunity for a Sr. Manager, Cloud and Infrastructure Engineering atUL Research Institutes and UL Standards & Engagement, based in our Evanston, IL, office.

The Sr. Manager, Cloud and Infrastructure Engineering, provides strategic leadership for the design, implementation, and management of UL Research Institutes (ULRI) and UL Standards & Engagement (ULSE) enterprise infrastructure. This role oversees both cloud (Azure and AWS) and on-premises environments, ensuring scalability, reliability, security, and cost-effectiveness across all platforms.

The Sr. Manager leads a multidisciplinary team of cloud engineers, HPC engineers, system engineers, and managed service providers, driving enterprise modernization and automation initiatives. The position partners closely with architecture, security, digital platforms, and IT operations teams to deliver a robust technology foundation that supports business growth, scientific research, and digital innovation.

This leader will set the strategic direction for cloud adoption, automation, and infrastructure optimization while fostering a culture of reliability, performance, and continuous improvement

UL Research Institutes and UL Standards & Engagement

At UL Research Institutes (ULRI) and UL Standards & Engagement (ULSE), we expand the boundaries of safety science to create a more secure and sustainable world. For more than a century, we have studied the unintended consequences of innovation, designed solutions to mitigate risk, created new safety standards and shared our findings with academia, scientists, manufacturers, and policymakers across industries. We identify critical safety and sustainability issues, asking the tough questions because we believe a safer world begins with knowledge.

What you'll learn and achieve:

As the Sr. Manager, Cloud and Infrastructure Engineering, you will play a key role in the rapid growth of UL as you:

• Lead multi-year cloud and infrastructure strategy: Define and execute strategic roadmaps that align with organizational priorities, ensuring modernization, scalability, and secure hybrid integration across on-prem and cloud environments.
• Drive modernization and migration initiatives: Oversee the design and execution of cloud adoption, data center transformation, and platform upgrades to deliver seamless, resilient, and future-ready infrastructure with embedded continuous improvement principles.
• Establish engineering standards and best practices: Define and enforce policies for infrastructure, cloud usage, automation, and service delivery in alignment with Enterprise Architecture and Information Security.
• Advance automation and DevOps maturity: Champion Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD pipelines, configuration management, and container orchestration (Kubernetes) to increase speed, consistency, and reliability.
• Implement FinOps and cost optimization practices: Apply financial operations principles to manage cloud and infrastructure spend, budgeting, and chargebacks, optimizing resource utilization and performance.
• Engineer hybrid and cloud-native platforms: Oversee design, implementation, and maintenance of cloud, on-prem, and HPC environments that power AI, analytics, and research workloads with high availability and observability.
• Ensure operational excellence and resilience: Govern managed service providers (MSPs), define KPIs/OKRs, and lead post-incident reviews, disaster recovery, and continuous performance optimization.
• Drive HPC, AI and computation excellence and adoption: Lead the design, implementation, and optimization of high-performance and AI computing infrastructure; ensure scalability, performance tuning, and system integration; and promote HPC adoption across research and engineering teams to accelerate AI and scientific innovation.
• Collaborate across IT domains and technology teams: Partner with Digital Platforms, Operations, and other technology teams to ensure infrastructure foundations, APIs, and integration layers enable automation, digital workflows, and data interoperability.
• Develop and empower high-performing teams: Lead, mentor, and grow cloud, system, and HPC engineers through defined roles, structured career paths, and a culture of process automation, documentation, collaboration, knowledge sharing and continuous learning.

What you'll experience working at UL Research Institutes and UL Standards & Engagement: We have pursued our mission of working for a safer, more secure, and sustainable world for nearly 130 years, embedding conscientious stewardship into everything we do.
• People: Our people make us special. You'll work with a diverse team of experts respected for their independence and transparency and build a network, because our approach is collaborative. We collaborate across disciplines, organizations, and geographies to build the global scientific response that today's global challenges require.
• Interesting work: Every day is different for us here. We see what's on the horizon and use our expertise to build the foundations of a safer future. You'll have the opportunity to push the boundaries of human understanding as part of a team working to advance the public good.
• Grow and achieve: We learn, work, and grow together through targeted development, reward, and recognition programs.
• Values. Four core values guide our work: collaboration, respect, integrity, and beneficence. By living our values, we inspire the trust essential to fulfilling our mission and foster the partnerships that enable us to pursue a beneficent future in which we all can thrive.
• Total Rewards: All employees at UL Research Institutes and UL Standards & Engagement are eligible for bonus compensation based on the level of the position. We offer comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and life insurance plans and a generous 401k matching structure of up to 5% of eligible pay. Moreover, we invest an additional 4% into your retirement saving fund after your first year of continuous employment. Depending on your role, you may be able to discuss flexible working arrangements with your manager. We also provide employees with paid time off, including vacation, holiday, sick, and volunteer days.

What makes you a great fit:

While no one candidate will embody every quality, the successful candidate will bring many of the following professional competencies and personal attributes:

• Proven experience leading enterprise-scale infrastructure and cloud engineering functions in hybrid or multi-cloud environments.
• Deep understanding of IaaS and PaaS solutions across Azure and AWS, including architecture, deployment, and operations. With the organization currently being mainly Azure focused, a deep understanding of Azure is preferred.
• Expertise in automation and Infrastructure as Code using tools such as Terraform, ARM templates, Chef, and Ansible.
• Strong knowledge of modern DevOps practices, including Kubernetes and container orchestration.
• Familiarity with parallel computing, like HPC clusters, GPU computing, and advanced data workloads.
• Familiarity with observability tools (e.g., Datadog) and monitoring best practices.
• Strong grasp of networking, storage, virtualization, and hybrid integration patterns.
• Excellent leadership and communication skills, with the ability to influence and collaborate across technical and business teams.
• Demonstrated ability to build high-performing teams, manage vendor relationships, and lead through organizational change.
• Strategic thinker capable of balancing innovation with risk management, governance, and cost optimization.

Professional education and experience requirements for the role include:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related discipline; Master's degree preferred.
• Minimum 10 years of progressive experience in infrastructure, systems, or cloud engineering roles, with at least 5 years in leadership positions.
• Experience managing hybrid cloud and on-prem environments, including large-scale migrations and modernization programs.
• Proven success in leading automation and IaC initiatives across multi-cloud platforms.
• Hands-on familiarity with HPC infrastructure, research computing, or AI/ML compute environments is highly desirable.
• Experience overseeing managed service providers (MSPs) and complex vendor ecosystems.
• Certifications in cloud technologies are preferred (Azure Solutions Architect, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, etc.) preferred.

About UL Research Institutes and UL Standards & Engagement

UL Research Institutes and UL Standards & Engagement are nonprofit organizations dedicated to advancing safety science research through the discovery and application of scientific knowledge. We conduct rigorous independent research and analyze safety data, convene experts worldwide to address risks, share knowledge through safety education and public outreach initiatives, and develop standards to guide safe commercialization of evolving technologies. We foster communities of safety, from grassroots initiatives for neighborhoods to summits of world leaders. Our organization employs collaborative and scientific approaches with partners and stakeholders to drive innovation and progress toward improving safety, security, and sustainability, ultimately enhancing societal well-being.

Our affiliate, UL Solutions, stands alongside us in working for a safer and more sustainable world. UL Solutions conducts testing, verification and certification, and provides training and advisory services, along with data-driven reporting and decision-making tools, for customers around the world.

To learn more, visit our websites UL.org and ULSE.org.

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