Overview

Role Purpose

The EMEA Director of Data Centre Operations Technology provides single‑threaded leadership and accountability for technology governance across EMEA Data Centre Operations, spanning IT operations (IT) and Critical Environment (CE) domains.

This role ensures that technology standards, patterns, and decisions scale safely, reliably, and consistently across EMEA, enabling rapid growth without compromising safety, availability, or operational resilience.

The role does not replace country level delivery or engineering ownership. Instead, it removes friction by establishing clear EMEA wide governance, decision rights, and readiness mechanisms.

Responsibilities

Key Accountabilities

• Own EMEA DCOPS technology governance across IT and CE, including standards, patterns, and exception frameworks.

• Establish and operate a clear EMEA technology decision model, including escalation paths and exception management.

• Partner with IT and CE program leadership to ensure technology readiness for new platforms, deployments, and scale events. All Capacity delivery and Power harvesting technology aspects.

• Lead EMEA wide efforts to identify and eliminate repeat technical incident patterns, driving prevention over reaction.

• Provide senior technical insight and guidance to EMEA leadership during major incidents, scale events, and risk reviews.

• Ensure consistent alignment with global engineering, tooling, monitoring, and control strategies and programs, tailored for EMEA operational reality.

• Act as the senior EMEA voice on DC technology strategy, translating technical complexity into executive ready decisions.


Out of Scope:

• Direct ownership of site operations or country delivery teams.

• Project or construction delivery.

• Centralised engineering execution teams.


Success Measures

• Region wide “single pane of glass” for assessment of technical compliance across sites (compliance with Microsoft programs and standards)

• Reduction in repeat or systemic technical incident classes across EMEA.

• Improved speed and clarity of technology decisions and exception resolution.

• Increased consistency in standards adoption with reduced local variance.

• Demonstrable improvement in operational readiness for new technology introductions and general capacity delivery .

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

• Engineering or Science degree or equivalent

• Senior leadership experience across strategic data centre operations technology, IT infrastructure and in particular Critical Environment domains.

• Proven experience operating at regional or multi‑country scale, influencing without direct control.

• Strong track record in governance, standards adoption, and operational reliability.

• Ability to engage senior stakeholders and drive alignment across technical and non‑technical audiences.

• Strategic design and planning.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience across both IT operations and Critical Environment disciplines. But with focus on CE

• Deep understanding of data centre reliability, availability risk, and incident dynamics.

• Strong executive communication and decision making capability.

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.