Senior Director End to End Delivery Technical Operations LONDON CENTRAL Hybrid Remote

Virtus Data Centres Ltd

About VIRTUS

VIRTUS Data Centres is the UK’s fastest growing data centre provider which owns, designs, builds and operates the country’s most efficient and flexible data centres.

Our mission is to consistently exceed the expectations of customers through innovative, high-quality solutions and services. We employ intelligent thinkers – people with positive attitudes, who add to the quality of our customer proposition and business.

We value individual endeavour and initiative, encourage teamwork and togetherness because collective experience and expertise is VIRTUS’ greatest strength.

Job Summary

Reporting to the VP of Data Centre Operations, the primary function of the role is to lead the set up and delivery of sites to the Operations organisation across EMEA, ensuring the highest levels of health and safety, security, uptime, performance, and customer satisfaction. The Senior Director End to End Delivery will be responsible for building operational excellence through process improvement, technology innovation, team leadership and collaborative approach.

Duties and Responsibilities

1. Drive Health and Safety by developing new measures or implement existing to drive a zero-accident culture.
2. Lead the transition of new sites into Operations.
3. Take ownership of and be accountable for the performance of the function to the Senior Management Team and stakeholders.
4. Lead and own activities that will ensure that as a new build site is transitioned into operations, it is 100% ready with all staff, operational procedures and best practices shared, practised, and implemented.
5. Ensure sites can run successfully by ensuring all sites have permits and permission to operate.
6. Where needed and if applicable, assume directorship for the relevant Country to participate in enabling business operations.
7. Actively collaborate with the Design & Build and Operations leadership teams in the planning, design, build and operation handover of new properties and redevelopment opportunities.
8. Be accountable for the ready for service operational handover for each facility.
9. Lead by example; inspire a culture of safety first and operational excellence when dealing with Data Centre Operations teams through strategic and hands on leadership, raising the bar of performance by demonstrating continuous improvement and coaching.
10. Role model a positive leadership style and be a leader in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Well-Being practices.
11. Multifaceted collaboration between operations, investments teams, and relevant departments across the business to ensure successful site delivery, through building excellent relationships, constructive cooperation and constant improvement.
12. Build for success. – be the interface (closed loop feedback) between operational teams and construction to ensure lessons learned drive growth and improvements for operations.
13. Deliver a consistently outstanding experience for our customers, no matter what the location. Work closely with other delivery organisations to enable the consistent adoption of best practice and continuous improvement across all our locations.
14. Be accountable for the flawless delivery of new sites to drive zero downtime, defects, and errors. Drive excellence when delivering to operations and ensure that practices, processes, and behaviours all lead to these goals.
15. Utilise operational knowledge to improve processes that build operational efficiency.
16. Ensure the necessary follow up lessons are learned from any implementation via the use of post-implementation reviews (PIR)s and root cause analysis. Ensure that all learned lessons are shared and embedded across the entire fleet of data centres.
17. Facilitate the delivery and analysis of performance data for how transition projects are progressing against goals and KPIs.
18. Act as a point of escalation for all issues relating to site transition.
19. Ensure full compliance against all operational processes and standards and all applicable ISO standards across the business.
20. Manage the operational budgets for Pre-Operations through VIRTUS’ finance system, working closely with peers and the Finance team. Undertake regular business planning reviews jointly with the Finance Department and other functions to set capital expenditure and operational expenditure budget levels, including representation to Board level for significant funding requests.
21. Identify and drive improvements to VIRTUS’ operational capability, working practices, productivity, and quality prior to operational handover.
22. Influence the design of new sites to drive consistency in the equipment and leverage economy of scale for maintenance agreements across EMEA.
23. Any other reasonable requests made by your line manager.

What success looks like in 12 months’ time:

1. Ensure an effective and traceable H&S mechanism exists to drive a zero-accident culture that can be sustained after handover.
2. All new sites are Operations ready three months before effective launch (public launch) including, but not limited to:
   1. All maintenance contracts are in place with the vendor onboarded and inducted;
   2. All staff are hired and trained and “shift ready”;
   3. A training matrix is in place and up to date.
   4. All Assets are ingested and tagged.
3. Complete handover to Operations with zero critical snags for all new sites.
4. Develop at least one drill scenario per category (mechanical, electrical, safety, security, access) and implement a drill mechanism to ensure consistent and constant compliance at handover.

Person Specification

1. Bachelor’s or master’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field, or equivalent experience.
2. 10+ years of experience in data centre operations, with at least 5 years in a leadership role.
3. Experience of managing large-scale data centre operations across multiple geographies.
4. Experience of working with hyperscale customers and development of positive customer relationships.
5. Very strong understanding of data centre infrastructure, including power and cooling systems, networking, and security.
6. Strong project management skills and experience leading large, complex technology projects.
7. Demonstrated ability to drive operational excellence through process improvement and technology innovation.
8. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to build strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders and lead a team to high performance.
9. Ability to work in a fast-paced, dynamic environment with multiple priorities.
10. Knowledge of regulatory and industry standards related to data centre operations.

In line with the VIRTUS’ Safeguarding Policy, the successful applicant must be willing to undergo a BS7858 screening process.