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For years, Italo Intriago had been a user, advocate, and major enthusiast of the enterprise open-source solutions company Red Hat Inc.
He grew up loading Red Hat CD-ROMs into his desktop computers. Now, Intriago has grown alongside his organization. He made his leadership ambitions known after working for many years as an individual contributor.
Intriago values leadership, and never takes for granted an opportunity to be a mentor for others. And in his role as manager of enterprise hardware services at Red Hat, Inc., he has been able to do just that.
“I enjoyed contributing to a team that did great work and got accolades as a group, but I wanted to give back,” Intriago says of his desire to move into leadership. “The only way I knew how to do that was to change myself.” He did that by asking for opportunities to develop new skills, lead projects, and guide individuals.
“I chose a mentor outside of IT so I could learn more about the business and grow as a leader.”
Italo Intriago
Intriago also elevated his career by entering Red Hat’s official mentoring program, and he took a unique approach. “I chose a mentor outside of IT so I could learn more about the business and grow as a leader,” he explains. Intriago’s mentor—a finance executive—helped him see how budgets and purchasing processes interact with what engineers, project managers, and others do in IT.
At the same time, Intriago enrolled in a Red Hat leadership training program to make sure he was ready to go what the right opportunity presented itself. He became a full-time manager in 2021.
When he’s not leading teams at Red Hat, Intriago can often be found mentoring and volunteering at the church his family attends. The father of two has been a youth leader for about fourteen years. He says that’s part of what made him want to move into management. “My spiritual life is all about helping others by sharing my experiences and letting people know who I am,” he says. “I started realizing that I could do that more and more in my work life, too.”
Today, Intriago leads his own team of diverse professionals who work together to power and protect Red Hat’s data centers, servers, and complete IT ecosystem. His enterprise hardware services team also manages large IT projects. With twelve data centers and nine employees spread across three countries, Intriago takes special steps to ensure he builds comradery and enables communication.
Intriago, who is in Raleigh, starts his tasks early so his workday will overlap with his colleagues in London, Brno, and in France. They communicate often via email and Slack, and have adopted the scrum agile framework to complete major project phases in two-week sprints.
As many companies shift to remote work with teammates scattered across the globe, many workers and managers are finding themselves in situations similar to Intriago’s He says other leaders who are seeking to build cohesive remote teams should over communicate.
“Check in often without micromanaging,” he says. “A leader’s job is to define goals and remove obstacles. Trust those on your team to do the job you hired them to do.”
One of Intriago’s biggest projects now involves moving the largest lab Red Hat Lab in Westford, Massachusetts, to a new Research Triangle Park Data Center. He’s also looking at all eleven of Red Hat’s Data Centers to determine how the company can cut costs and stay competitive in specific markets while keeping costs low and uptime high. Lastly, Red Hat’s enterprise hardware services team is tapping into resources from parent company IBM to prepare for next-generation OpenShift AI services.
“A leader’s job is to define goals and remove obstacles. Trust those on your team to do the job you hired them to do.”
Italo Intriago
In 2024, the company plans to continue building an inclusive culture, leading the open-source community, and harnessing the potential of AI to help users find innovative ways to solve difficult challenges. The entire IT department will power those goals, and Intriago and his enterprise hardware services team is ready for action.
