Director, Data Center Operations
Oracle · London, United Kingdom · 1d ago
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is seeking a Director, Data Center Operations to provide strategic and operational leadership for the Data Center Service Operations team within EMEA and JAPAC. This leader will shape the operating strategy, performance standards, and continuous-improvement agenda required to support OCI’s growth.
The Director, Data Center Operations is the regional leader and a key partner to Data Center Operations executive leadership, Data Center Engineering, Incident Management, project teams, and other OCI organizations. The role leads complex technical escalations related to Data Center Infrastructure, process, hardware break-fix,and lifecycle-management activities across multiple data centers, working closely with regional peers and Data Center leaders in other regions to drive consistent global outcomes.
What You’ll Do
- Lead the operations of one or more service operations organizations who support data center sites and technical teams within a region, setting clear priorities, goals, and performance expectations.
- Define the strategic direction for operational performance monitoring and determining and recommending improvements, including process, workflows and other continuous improvement activities.
- Establish and execute a continuous-improvement strategy that delivers measurable progress against operational KPIs, reliability goals, efficiency targets, and customer commitments.
- Oversee support for complex technical escalations across multiple data centers; establish effective triage, monitoring, scheduling, and automation practices.
- Set and enforce standards for incident, crisis, problem, and root-cause management, aligned with business-continuity requirements.
- Ensure issues, processes, and solutions are documented, standardized, and maintained in a comprehensive knowledge base that supports consistent global operations.
- Establish, maintain, and ensure adherence to global operational processes, policies, security controls, and standards to promote safe, consistent, and efficient operations across data center regions.
- Ensure that software and tooling requirements for global Data Center Operations are captured, collated and prioritized for internal and external development teams to ensure that Data Center Operations tooling supports the mission of the team.
- Partner directly with internal customers, stakeholders, and service partners to improve service quality, operational efficiency, and the effectiveness of the Data Center Service Operations function.
- Serve as the primary liaison with senior project teams and Data Center leadership to align resources, timelines, long-term capacity needs, and standards, and provide operational oversight for initiatives affecting Data Center Operations to ensure they meet agreed requirements and outcomes.
- Build and develop an colaborative, high-performing organization through coaching, talent development, succession planning, and accountable performance management.
- Communicate operational health, risks, major initiatives, and decisions clearly to senior and executive stakeholders.
What You’ll Bring
- Significant experience in data center operations, critical-facilities operations, cloud infrastructure, technical support, engineering, or a related enterprise-technology environment.
- Experience supporting large enterprise customers, or internal customers operating at enterprise scale, in a data center, cloud operations, technical support, or engineering environment.
- Demonstrated success leading multiple technical teams and/or managers in a complex, high-availability operational environment.
- Strong knowledge of data center infrastructure, including power, cooling, containment, airflow, structured cabling, connectivity, capacity planning, and lifecycle management.
- Demonstrated ability to prioritize a varied, high-volume workload and lead teams effectively in a high-pressure operational environment.
- Strong knowledge of cloud-computing concepts and OCI services, or the ability to rapidly develop OCI domain expertise.
- Experience leading complex incident response, problem management, root-cause analysis, change management, and continual-improvement programs.
- Proven ability to define strategy, translate it into executable plans, and lead cross-functional initiatives across multiple organizations.
- Strong operational judgment and the ability to make sound decisions in ambiguous, high-pressure situations.
- Exceptional written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to influence senior leaders and communicate technical concepts in business terms.
- A track record of developing leaders, building diverse teams, and creating a culture of ownership, learning, and operational excellence.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience in hyperscale cloud, large enterprise data center, or other mission-critical infrastructure environments.
- Strong knowledge of cloud-computing concepts and global data center operations; familiarity with OCI services is highly desirable.
- Experience with automation, operational analytics, and performance-monitoring tools.
- Lean, Six Sigma, ITIL, or comparable continuous-improvement and service-management experience.
- Experience managing regional operating budgets, vendors, inventory, logistics, or significant capital and infrastructure investments.