Job Description

Data Center Operations Lead:

The Data Center Operations Lead / Architect is primarily responsible for leading 24/7 data center operations, ensuring high availability, reliability, security, and cost-effective delivery of infrastructure services. This role focuses heavily on operational excellence, incident management, and service delivery, while providing practical architectural inputs to improve performance, scalability, and stability.

Key Responsibilities:

Operations Management (Primary Focus)

• Lead and manage day-to-day data center operations across servers, storage, networking, and facilities

• Ensure maximum uptime, system availability, and SLA compliance

• Oversee monitoring, alerting, and proactive issue resolution

• Manage operational activities such as backups, patching, batch jobs, and scheduled maintenance

• Ensure reliable, secure, and cost-effective delivery of infrastructure services

Incident, Problem & Change Management

• Act as the primary escalation point for critical incidents and outages

• Drive resolution of incidents in collaboration with cross-functional teams

• Lead root cause analysis (RCA) and implement preventive measures

• Ensure strict adherence to ITIL processes (Incident, Problem, Change, Service Request Management)

Service Delivery & Process Governance:

• Lead ITIL-aligned service delivery processes, ensuring consistent execution

• Drive operational excellence, SLA adherence, and continuous improvement initiatives

• Ensure high-quality handling of incidents, problems, changes, and service requests

Team Leadership

• Lead, mentor, and manage a team of data center engineers and operations staff

• Manage shift schedules, on-call rotations, and 24/7 support coverage

• Drive performance management and team skill development

Infrastructure Operations & Maintenance:

• Oversee installation, configuration, maintenance, and lifecycle management of infrastructure

• Manage hardware upgrades, patching, and DC activities (Moves/Adds/Changes)

• Ensure backup, disaster recovery (DR), and business continuity readiness

Architecture Support (Secondary Focus)

• Provide operational insights into infrastructure design and architecture decisions

• Support implementation of new technologies ensuring operational readiness and stability

• Recommend improvements for performance, capacity, and resilience

Capacity & Performance Management:

• Monitor infrastructure utilization and performance metrics

• Plan and manage capacity and scalability requirements

• Optimize resource usage to improve efficiency and reduce cost

Vendor & Stakeholder Management:

• Coordinate with vendors for support, maintenance, and issue resolution

• Collaborate with Cloud, Network, Security, and Application teams

• Ensure adherence to SLAs and service delivery commitments

Compliance & Security:

• Ensure compliance with security standards, policies, and regulatory requirements

• Maintain operational documentation and SOPs

• Support audits, risk assessments, and compliance activities

Monitoring & Reporting:

• Manage monitoring tools and implement alert thresholds

• Track and report key metrics such as uptime, MTTR, SLA compliance, and incident trends

• Provide dashboards and reports to leadership

Technical Skills:

• Responsible for ensuring reliable, secure, and cost effective delivery of infrastructure services across the environment

• Strong hands-on expertise in servers, storage, networking, and virtualization

• Deep understanding of ITIL processes (Incident, Problem, Change, Service Requests)

• Experience with monitoring tools and ITSM platforms (e.g., Service Now)

Experience:

• Typically requires 10-15+ years of experience in data center operations, infrastructure support, or similar operations-focused leadership roles

• Proven experience managing 24/7 production environments

Process

• Leads ITIL-aligned service delivery processes, ensuring consistent and efficient execution

• Ensures governance across incident, problem, change, and service request management

• Focus on operational stability, process adherence, and continuous improvement

Preferred Skills:

• Experience in banking or financial services domain

• Exposure to cloud platforms (Azure, AWS) and hybrid environments

• Familiarity with automation tools (Ansible, Terraform)

• Strong troubleshooting and analytical capabilities

Key Competencies

• Strong operations leadership and incident management skills

• Ability to work in high-pressure, critical production environments

• Excellent problem-solving and decision-making abilities

• Effective communication and stakeholder management

Work Environment

• 24/7 support model with on-call responsibilities

• Coordination across multiple data center locations and teams

Salary Range- $85,000-$100,000 a year