Hi D***n, I hope you’re doing well. I came across your profile and was impressed by your track record as CIO and Head of Technology Services,especially your leadership in infrastructure, vendor management, and digital transformation at the C***c D***e of M***d-N***e. I’m J***e, an HR recruiter at StrategyBrain, and I’m partnering with G***h S***s to find a Chief Technology Officer (Infrastructure & Operations). In this role, you’d shape global IT strategy, mentor teams, drive data-center and network excellence, and collaborate with executive leadership. Would you be open to a brief chat to explore whether this opportunity might align with your next career move? Looking forward to your thoughts. Best regards, J***e

Hi D***n, Great to hear you’re open to chatting. I’m available Wednesday (Apr 10) at 2:00 pm AEDT or Thursday (Apr 11) at 10:00 am AEDT,would either work for you? Also, to make our call as productive as possible, could you share any current challenges or frustrations in your CIO/Head of Technology Services role? For example, are you seeing bottlenecks in scaling infrastructure, gaps in digital transformation support, or areas where you’d welcome more vendor or team alignment? Understanding your key pain points will help me highlight how G***h’s CTO (Infrastructure & Operations) opportunity might address them. Looking forward to your thoughts and confirming a time. Best regards, J***e

Hi D***n, Thursday, April 11 at 10:00 am AEDT is confirmed. Ahead of our call, here’s a brief on G***h S***s and the CTO (Infrastructure & Operations) role to frame our conversation: G***h S***s is a global leader in IT managed services with 5,000+ employees, partnering across finance, healthcare, and education to deliver reliable, scalable infrastructure and cloud solutions. The company values continuous learning, technological excellence, and an entrepreneurial, client-focused culture. In this CTO role you will: - Develop and implement end-to-end IT infrastructure and operations strategies that align with G***h’s growth objectives - Lead and mentor a global team of IT professionals, fostering collaboration, accountability, and continuous improvement - Establish a robust vendor governance model and streamline procurement to eliminate overlapping solutions and drive cost efficiencies - Accelerate digital transformation by optimizing data center performance, leading cloud migrations, and strengthening network and cybersecurity posture - Partner with executive leadership on technology roadmaps, budget planning, and strategic priorities Why this aligns with your background and needs: - You’ll have the mandate and investment to modernize legacy on-prem environments, resolve capacity bottlenecks, and accelerate cloud migrations - A clear governance framework and dedicated vendor management structure will help you eliminate friction and delays in service roll-outs - You’ll drive high-impact digital initiatives at a global scale, leveraging your proven leadership in infrastructure and operations G***h offers competitive compensation, performance-based bonuses, and comprehensive professional development programs (leadership training, technical certifications, mentoring). Does this overview resonate? Let me know if there’s anything you’d like me to cover before our call. Looking forward to speaking on Thursday! Best regards, J***e

Hi D***n, Great questions,here’s a bit more color: 1. Global Infrastructure Team & Reporting - The Infrastructure & Operations organization comprises roughly 120 engineers spread across Americas, EMEA and APAC. Each region has a Regional Infrastructure Director who reports into our Senior Director of Infrastructure & Ops. That Senior Director (alongside the Heads of Security and Cloud Services) reports directly to the CIO. In this CTO role, you’ll be part of the Global Technology Leadership team and report straight to the CIO, partnering closely with your regional leads and our executive leadership. 2. Cloud Platforms & Data-Center Technologies - We run a hybrid-cloud environment using AWS and Azure as primary public clouds (with GCP pilots underway). - Our four main co-location data centers (North America, Europe, APAC, LATAM) leverage Cisco Nexus/ACI networking, Cisco UCS compute, VMware vSphere virtualization, Dell EMC & NetApp storage arrays, and Veeam for backup and replication. 3. Top Priorities in the First 90 Days - 0,30 days: Meet your regional teams, audit current capacity and performance metrics, and identify any immediate risk or bottleneck. - 30,60 days: Define a unified vendor governance framework to eliminate overlaps, secure cost efficiencies, and streamline procurement. - 60,90 days: Present a detailed Infra & Ops roadmap aligned to G***h’s growth objectives,this will include quick-win data-center optimizations, initial legacy-to-cloud migration milestones, and a staffing/skill-matrix review to ensure you have the right bench. Happy to dig into any of this on Thursday at 10:00 am AEDT. Let me know if there’s anything else you’d like ahead of our call. Best regards, J***e

Hi D***n, Great questions,here’s some more detail: 1. Automation & Monitoring - We use Terraform as our primary IaC engine across AWS, Azure and GCP (pilot), backed by a centrally governed module registry and CI/CD pipelines (Ansible + Jenkins) for consistent deployments. - For monitoring, our stack includes Datadog for metrics, Splunk for log aggregation, and Cisco Tetration for network analytics, supplemented by native cloud monitoring (CloudWatch and Azure Monitor). 2. IaC Standardization - Our IaC framework is about 85,90% standardized across Americas, EMEA and APAC. Core modules (networking, compute, storage) are centrally maintained; regions contribute and approve any local extensions under our global governance process. 3. Budget Authority - As CTO, you’ll own the global Infrastructure & Ops budget and set overall spend priorities in partnership with our CIO and finance team. Regional directors manage day-to-day operational budgets (within agreed thresholds, e.g. up to USD 200K per project) but any larger CapEx or strategic investments route through your office for final approval. Hope that helps. Looking forward to discussing further on Thursday at 10:00 am AEDT! Best, J***e

Hi D***n, Great questions,here’s some deeper detail: 1. Terraform Governance & Drift Control - A central Infrastructure Architecture team owns our Terraform module registry. Core modules (network, compute, storage) are maintained centrally; any regional extensions go through a review by a global governance board made up of architects and regional leads. - Modules follow semantic versioning in Git, and our Ansible + Jenkins pipelines enforce “plan” and “apply” steps in each region. Nightly drift checks run against remote state (secured in our cloud storage backend) with automatic alerts if any divergence is detected. 2. Monitoring Alerts & Incident Response - All metric, log and network alerts from Datadog, Splunk, Cisco Tetration (plus CloudWatch/Azure Monitor) feed into a single global NOC platform. - The NOC provides 24/7 triage and first-response,escalating incidents to regional Ops teams when local action is needed, while our Global Incident Management team coordinates cross-region issues and post-mortem reviews. 3. CapEx Approval Cadence - Regional directors can green-light projects up to USD 200K. Anything above that routes through your office. - We hold a monthly CapEx review with the CIO and finance partners for larger requests, alongside a quarterly strategic investment session to align on multi-year programs. Proposals are typically submitted two weeks before each monthly meeting to ensure timely budget forecasting. Hope this clarifies things,happy to dive into any of these topics further on Thursday at 10:00 am AEDT. Looking forward to our chat! Best regards, J***e

Hi D***n, Great questions,here’s how we handle each: 1. Fast-tracking urgent Terraform module updates & exception reviews - We’ve built a “fast lane” into our global governance board. When a critical update (security patch or business-impacting change) is flagged, a subset of architects and regional leads convenes within 24 hours via a standing virtual channel. They use a lightweight exception checklist,covering risk, compliance and rollback planning,to approve and merge the change within two working days. - Any non-standard changes or regional extensions go through an exception-board workflow: the update is deployed under strict guardrails, fully documented, and then slotted into the next monthly governance meeting for a full review. 2. Nightly drift alerts in NOC runbooks - Every night our Terraform drift-check jobs compare live state to code and push alerts into the global NOC platform. The NOC runbook then: a. Tier-1 analysts validate severity against predefined thresholds. b. Low-risk drifts trigger an automated remediation playbook (Ansible) immediately. c. High-risk or persistent drifts escalate to the regional Ops on-call engineer with a pre-populated incident ticket and context. - All actions and results flow into our ITSM tool for tracking and post-mortems. 3. Forecasting tools for multi-year ROI in monthly CapEx reviews - We use our ERP-integrated financial planning system alongside Power BI dashboards to model 3,5 year ROI scenarios (NPV, IRR, TCO). Live cost, utilization and performance data feed into these models. - For rapid “what-if” analyses (cloud vs. on-prem, hybrid mixes), we maintain standardized sensitivity sheets that can be updated on the fly,and those outputs drive our monthly CapEx review with the CIO and finance team. Hope this gives you the detail you’re looking for. Let me know if you’d like any deeper dives or examples ahead of our call. Best, J***e

Hi D***n, Happy to share more detail: 1. Fast-lane module exception example , Scenario: A critical OpenSSL vulnerability surfaced in our network module. We flagged it via our “fast-lane” Slack channel, triggering a 24-hour rapid review. Within 4 hours, our core architects approved the patch against a lightweight risk checklist (impact, rollback plan, testing scope). , Rollback plan: We version-tagged the last-known-good module (v2.3.0) in Git. After merging the hotfix (v2.3.1), we deployed to a single canary region, ran automated pre- and post-apply tests, then ramped out globally. If any test failed, our Jenkins pipeline would automatically revert to v2.3.0 and restore state from our Terraform backend,completing rollback within 15 minutes. 2. Nightly drift remediation KPIs , Playbook Success Rate: % of Ansible runs that complete without errors , Mean Time to Remediate: average time from drift detection to successful remediation , Drift Incident Volume: count of drift alerts vs. previous week/month , Post-Remediation Recurrence: % of assets that re-drift within 7 days 3. Live data sources for Power BI ROI sensitivity sheets , AWS Cost Explorer & Azure Cost Management APIs for real-time cloud spend , VMware vSphere performance & capacity metrics via our ERP connector , Cisco Tetration network utilization feeds , Datadog application and infrastructure metrics , ERP-sourced license, support, and maintenance costs Let me know if you’d like any deeper examples before our call on Thursday at 10:00 am AEDT. Looking forward to it! Best, J***e