Associate Director - IT Infrastructure - Financial Services

Position: Associate Director-IT Infrastructure (Leading MNC Financial Services Co)

Role:

- Reporting to Chief Operating Officer, the person is responsible for managing all IT infrastructure initiatives and full operational support.

- Lead organization's technology infrastructure, strategy, and team, ensuring systems are secure, efficient, and aligned with business goals

- Strategic Planning: Develop IT infrastructure strategies and policies that support overall business growth.

- Infrastructure Management: Manage and support IT infrastructure, including servers (on prem data centers, virtualization, and cloud-AWS/Azure/GCP), networks, and hardware/software systems.

- Oversee firewalls, endpoint protection platforms and secure access solutions (VPN, etc.)

- Collaborate closely with global IT, Network, and Cloud teams to ensure alignment with the infrastructure requirements of the India team.

- Ensure compliance with standards (ISO 27001, NIST, SOC2, CIS Benchmarks) and regulatory requirements.

- Conduct regular security assessments, penetration tests (in coordination with red teams/vendors), and risk evaluations.

- Manage incident response plans and lead response during cybersecurity events.

- Implement monitoring for AI model drift, adversarial attacks, and prompt injection vulnerabilities. Evaluate, deploy, and fine-tune enterprise security AI tools

- Leadership & Mentoring: Hire, lead, and mentor IT professionals and managers, fostering a high-performance team culture.

- Security & Compliance: Implement robust security measures (cybersecurity) and ensure data security compliance.

- Budget Oversight: Develop and manage the IT budget to ensure cost-effectiveness.

- Project Management: Oversee major IT infra projects, including server migrations (private cloud/AWS/Azure) and upgrades.

- Vendor Relations: Manage relationships with external technology vendors and service providers

Requirements:

- Experience: 12+ years in IT, with 5+ years in managing team roles.

- The ideal candidate has deep expertise in cybersecurity architecture, infrastructure security controls, cloud security, and hands-on experience integrating AI-driven security solutions.

- Technical Knowledge: Strong understanding of networks, cloud computing, and cybersecurity. Experience onboarding and governing AI tools (SaaS AI/LLM APIs) with DLP/CASB and API security.

- Leadership: Proven ability to lead teams and manage department operations.

- Communication: Excellent communication skills to interface with non-technical stakeholders and leadership

Location: Mumbai

This position is for a Client of Vertex Corporate Services which is a Leading MNC Financial Services Co.