Senior Data Center Operations Manager

Microsoft
Redmond, United States of America
4 days ago

Role details

Contract type
Permanent contract
Employment type
Full-time (> 32 hours)
Working hours
Regular working hours
Languages
English
Experience level
Senior
Compensation
$ 229K

Job location

Abilene, United States of America

Tech stack

Microsoft Online Services
Data Centers
System Center Operations Management
Microsoft Software
Information Technology
Network Server

Job description

As a SeniorData Center Operations Manager, your success will be measured by:

People Management:

  • Deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.
  • Live our culture, embody our values, and practice our leadership principles.
  • Define team objectives and outcomes, enable success across boundaries, and help the team adapt and learn.
  • Attract and retain great people, know everyone's capabilities and aspirations, and invest in the growth of others.

Data Center Operations:

  • Document and drive alignment on dependencies, supplier contracts, success metrics, resource readiness, operational, supportability, and manageability criteria.
  • Review Service Level Agreements (SLAs), Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), and Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) and provide input to improve or increase efficiency across IT and Critical Environment (CE) services.
  • Partner cross-functionally to support global and regional initiatives (e.g., environmental health and safety, risk assessments, certifications).
  • Manages/supports alignment to budget of the Data Center and makes tradeoff decisions to adhere to sound fiscal practices.
  • Support budget planning and forecasting demand costs, driving awareness among business leaders on implications of service management issues and negotiating to win resources of costs, risks, and team leads as required.
  • Plan and work with business partners when executing their requirements to maintain adherence to datacenter availability, safety, and security.
  • Follows and adheres to run book provided by Environment, Health, & Safety division. Reports immediately any safety or security issues or concerns.

Service Delivery:

  • Accountable for end-to-end service compliance, quality, and client satisfaction for the agreed-upon service levels.
  • Manage relationships with clients to ensure that all expectations are clarified and understood and deliver solutions that exceed client expectations while maintaining a strong customer focus.
  • Applies deep subject matter expertise and escalates to meet SLA/OLAs with minimal disruption to the client/customer and business and reviews metrics with team to ensure understanding of targets and current performance levels.
  • Share common and repeating cases with regional and global teams, while providing best practices to address and mitigate recurrence of issues and implement more efficient solutions for resolution.
  • Manage resources appropriately to accommodate pilot programs and task force participation and make recommendations for additional funding where necessary.
  • Understand future business demand within the datacenter to ensure staffing levels are appropriate.
  • Ensure teams complete the required training and partner with Learning & Development organization to evolve training portfolio.
  • Participate in every Sev 1 and Sev 2 Incident Bridge meeting and approve root cause analysis and postmortem reporting.
  • Empowers teams to work collaboratively and creates visibility to help other teams succeed with regional/global management teams.

Data Center Work Environment

  • Remove barriers that inhibit agility to enable team to shift priorities quickly without losing productivity.
  • Maintain a broad perspective and work to incorporate diverse viewpoints while identifying and evaluating opportunities to create strategies that cross organizational boundaries and drive broad business goals.
  • Establish a culture of safety, quality, and customer obsession while ensuring the team's standards are consistent with overall service objectives.
  • Create the type of conditions for successful collaboration, geared toward identifying and resolving organization-wide issues by bringing together creative and relevant solutions from diverse perspectives.
  • Understand workforce capability and delegate work accordingly across team to effectively deliver results, finding ways to accomplish more by enabling others.
  • Find opportunities for collaboration across groups within division, ensure that cross-team commitments are set, and achieve scale by enabling the work of others.
  • Delegate to others to promote growth and development of future leaders.
  • Act as a trusted resource and advisor to a wide network of colleagues with diverse viewpoints.
  • Recognize team successes and reward teamwork and contributions to team success while driving a culture that's focused on meeting strategic goals

Ownership:

  • Have pride and a sense of personal accountability for end-to-end service quality, completeness, and resulting customer experience.
  • Identify unaddressed issues across service and resolve, escalate, or find the appropriate owner to ensure the highest level of quality.
  • Drive and own the service management perspective to ensure that business leaders understand the business implications of risks, dependencies, and budgets to enable good business decisions and ensure the long-term value of the service.
  • Model and foster accountability and morale for the team.

Requirements

  • High School Qualification or equivalent AND 6+ years experience of mission-critical service management (e.g., providing IT services, manufacturing, warehouse, retail, military, or managing physical operations in an IT and/or critical environment infrastructure)
  • OR equivalent experience
  • 1+ year(s) people management experience.

Other Requirements:

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role. These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:

  • Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.
  • Citizenship & Citizenship Verification:This position requires verification of citizenship due to citizenship-based legal restrictions. Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or local government agency customers and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions where required or permitted by applicable law. To meet this legal requirement, and as a condition of employment, the successful candidate's citizenship will be verified with a valid passport, * Bachelor's or Technical College Degree in Computer Science, Math, Telecommunications, Electrical/Mechanical Engineering, Supply Chain Management or related field AND 12+ years experience in critical environment infrastructures (e.g., UPS, Generator, AHU), or working in physical IT infrastructures (e.g., Servers, SANs, Networking, Capacity, DC Rack/Enclosures, structured cabling) OR High School Qualification or equivalent AND 14+ years experience in critical environment infrastructures (e.g., UPS, Generator, AHU), or working in physical IT infrastructures (e.g., Servers, SANs, Networking, Capacity, DC Rack/Enclosures, structured cabling)
  • OR equivalent experience.
  • 3+ years people management experience.
  • Applicable certifications: APICS/Inventory Control, CompTIA, Microsoft, Network Certifications, CCNA Certifications, ITIL v3 Foundation, Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) Certifications, Leadership Development Certifications, PMP, CDCMP.
  • BS/BA degree in Mechanical/Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, Telecommunications, or equivalent experience.
  • Demonstrated ability to collaborate, present, and negotiate across various levels and functions, including executive company leaders, engineers, suppliers, partners, and external customers.
  • Strong working knowledge of physical IT infrastructures (e.g. Servers, SANs, Networking, Capacity, DC Rack/Enclosures, structured cabling, etc.).
  • Knowledge of critical environment concepts and infrastructure (e.g. Electrical Distribution, Mechanical Cooling Systems, etc.).
  • Firm comprehension of financial management, budgeting, and forecasting.
  • Awareness of IT Service Operations fundamentals and principles (ITIL, MOF, OLA/SLA, etc.).
  • Project or program management experience and certification(s) (e.g. PMI, etc.).
  • Experience with process improvement principles such as Six Sigma or Kaizen.

Data Center Operations Management M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $127,600 - $229,200 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $168,900 - $253,300 per year.

About the company

Microsoft is a global technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Our mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. We develop, license, and support a wide range of software products, services, and devices that help individuals and businesses realize their full potential.

Our flagship products include the Microsoft 365 productivity cloud, Windows operating system, Azure cloud platform, and Dynamics 365 business applications. We are also a leader in areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, developer tools, and gaming through Xbox and Game Pass.

With operations in more than 190 countries and over 220,000 employees worldwide, Microsoft is committed to responsible innovation, inclusive economic growth, and sustainability. We work closely with governments, industries, and communities to ensure that technology serves the public good and helps address some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

As we celebrate our 50th anniversary in 2025, we continue to look forward—investing in AI, cloud, and quantum computing to shape the future of work, education, and society at large scale.

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