Director People Operations Jobs in Ridgefield, CT

Endeavour has an exciting opportunity for someone passionate about sustainability and eager to be part of an innovative company that's on a journey to transform the world's infrastructure. We are seeking a Director of Global IT DevOps & AI Infrastructure to take full ownership of how technology is built, deployed, secured, and scaled across the organization. This role is part of the support team that services the entire our Endeavour ecosystem and contributes to the overall health and success of the organization. This role goes beyond traditional IT. You will define and lead the end-to-end lifecycle of AI-powered digital products - from early-stage prototypes built in rapid-development environments to fully productionized, secure, and globally scalable platforms.

You will serve as the bridge between innovation and execution, ensuring that ideas don't stall in experimentation but are operationalized into resilient, enterprise-grade systems - while also building and leading the teams, financial models, and integration strategies required to sustain long-term growth.

The Director of Global IT DevOps & AI Infrastructure needs to be agile, professional, and comfortable in a rapidly changing environment. The right person is trustworthy with confidential information, highly organized, self-motivated, has excellent communication skills, can think strategically, and works equally as well independently as with a team.

Endeavour is highly selective about the people we bring on board because our ecosystem depends on it. Change happens quickly here, and we must maintain a strong team of honest, communicative, collaborative, open-minded, strategic, reliable, and driven team members. We seek ultra-creatives and superstar performers with self-awareness, a sense of humility, and a hunger to make a positive impact in the world. Endeavour offers flexibility and endless growth opportunities to those who can harness their skills and talents and identify how and where to use them to add value. Our support team is the heart of the ecosystem. We're a diverse group of bright, passionate, dedicated people, working together to make a real difference. Are you ready to join the journey?

DevOps Ownership & Productionization of AI Systems

• Lead the DevOps Strategy: Own the end-to-end strategy including CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure-as-code (IaC), automated testing, and release management across all environments.
• Standardize Development Pathways: Design and enforce a standardized path from prototype to staging to production, specifically for AI-generated applications, low-code/no-code platforms (e.g., Lovable), and internal experimentation environments.
• Establish Frameworks: Drive versioning, monitoring, rollback, and observability across both AI and traditional applications.
• Implement Scalable Deployment Patterns: Utilize containers, serverless architectures, and microservices to support rapid iteration without sacrificing stability.

AI Platform Scaling & Lifecycle Management

• Manage the AI Lifecycle: Architect prompt engineering environments, model orchestration, API integrations, and validation pipelines.
• Evolve Prototypes: Define the pathway for AI prototypes to become internal tools, client-facing applications, and public-facing digital platforms.
• Establish Governance: Build frameworks for model usage, cost control, performance monitoring, and output reliability.
• Partner for Success: Collaborate with stakeholders to ensure AI solutions are production-ready, auditable, and aligned with business goals.

Cloud Architecture & Infrastructure Engineering

• Optimize Cloud Environments: Own global cloud infrastructure (primarily Microsoft Azure) to ensure high availability, security, compliance, and horizontal scalability.
• Design for Data: Architect infrastructure that supports data-intensive workloads, spatial systems, and AI-driven applications.
• Build Resilient Systems: Ensure infrastructure is capable of supporting global users, partners, and mission-critical operations.

AI Security & Enterprise Governance

• Secure AI Usage: Establish secure enterprise environments with data isolation, sandboxing, role-based access controls (RBAC), and secure API orchestration.
• Protect Critical Assets: Define governance policies that protect proprietary infrastructure designs and sensitive client/operational data.
• Ensure Compliance: Stay ahead of evolving standards regarding AI usage, data privacy, and enterprise risk management.

Team Leadership & Organizational Development

• Build and Lead High-Performing Teams: Recruit, develop, and scale global DevOps, cloud engineering, and AI infrastructure teams, fostering a culture of accountability, innovation, and operational excellence.
• Define Operating Models: Establish clear roles, workflows, and performance expectations across distributed teams, contractors, and external partners.
• Mentor and Develop Talent: Provide hands-on leadership, coaching, and career development for technical team members, ensuring long-term capability growth.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Act as a key partner to product, engineering, and business leaders to align technical execution with company priorities.

Budget Ownership & Financial Management

• Own the Technology Budget: Develop and manage the global IT DevOps and cloud infrastructure budget, including forecasting, cost optimization, and vendor management.
• Optimize Cloud & AI Spend: Implement cost governance strategies across cloud platforms, AI tooling, and third-party services to ensure efficient scaling.
• Vendor & Partner Management: Evaluate, negotiate, and manage relationships with technology vendors, SaaS providers, and infrastructure partners.
• ROI-Driven Decision Making: Ensure all infrastructure and AI investments are aligned with measurable business outcomes and scalability goals.

Integration Strategy & Systems Architecture

• Lead Enterprise Integration Strategy: Define and oversee integration architecture across internal systems, third-party platforms, and partner ecosystems.
• API & Data Ecosystem Ownership: Ensure seamless interoperability between AI platforms, ERP/supply chain systems, data visualization tools, and spatial technologies.
• Enable Scalable Data Flows: Architect reliable, secure, and real-time data pipelines that support both operational systems and AI-driven insights.
• Reduce Technical Fragmentation: Standardize integration patterns, tools, and governance to minimize redundancy and improve system cohesion across the organization.

Global Collaboration & Asset Ownership

• Platform Enablement: Architect identity, access, and collaboration systems for a globally distributed workforce, ensuring seamless interaction between internal teams, partners, clients, and vendors.
• Digital Infrastructure Ownership: Take full command of domain registries, DNS architecture, SSL lifecycle management, global routing, and web infrastructure.
• Performance Assurance: Ensure all digital assets are secure, performant, and scalable across regions.

• 7+ years in IT DevOps, AI infrastructure or cloud engineering
• 3+ years of leadership experience
• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Business Management, or a related field.
• Proven DevOps & Scaling Leadership: Experience owning DevOps and infrastructure in environments scaling from startup to enterprise ($100M–$1B+), with a track record of taking products from MVP to production-grade systems.
• Team Leadership Experience: Demonstrated success building and leading high-performing global engineering or infrastructure teams in fast-paced environments.
• Financial & Budget Ownership: Experience managing technology budgets, optimizing cloud spend, and aligning investments with business outcomes.
• Deep Technical Expertise: Strong, hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure (or equivalent cloud platforms), CI/CD pipelines, containers, IaC, networking, DNS, and distributed systems.
• Integration & Systems Thinking: Experience managing complex integrations across APIs, data visualization platforms, and ERP/supply chain technologies.
• Strategic & Hands-On Operator: Capable of operating at an executive, architectural level while remaining comfortable rolling up your sleeves to build systems from scratch.

• AI Ecosystem Fluency: Proven ability to operationalize LLMs, AI platforms, and rapid-development (low-code/no-code) ecosystems within an enterprise, deeply understanding AI reliability, evaluation, and scaling challenges.
• Strategic & Hands-On Operator: Capable of operating at an executive, architectural level while remaining comfortable rolling up your sleeves to build systems from scratch.
• Mission Alignment: Deeply motivated by applying technology and AI to solve real-world challenges in global water and energy infrastructure.

Endeavour is taking on global challenges, and to create the appropriate global solutions is not easy. Our teams work extremely hard because we believe in Endeavour's mission: to guarantee clean water and renewable energy to everyone, everywhere by decentralizing infrastructure, developing new technologies, & deploying energy, water, and waste treatment solutions that are more profitable than those that currently exist. We are a group of passionate change-makers who want to leave the world better than the way we found it. Endeavour prides itself on hiring talented, highly motivated people because that's what our mission requires. There is a strong sense of camaraderie between good-natured people who bring their A-game to work every day to make a difference. To work at Endeavour is to know that you are part of something special—something bigger than yourself.

Position: Director of Global IT DevOps & AI Infrastructure

Full-Time or Part-Time: Full-Time

Reports to: Founder & CEO

Location: Remote - US