Lead Infrastructure Engineer
Indexed description
As Lead Engineer (Operations) you are the operational authority for this estate: accountable for the health, stability and continuous improvement of everything from power, cooling and rack through to virtualization, compute and data protection. This is a senior individual-contributor leadership role — you lead through expertise, judgement and influence rather than a direct reporting line.
We are hiring this role deliberately. Beyond deep technical command, we want someone who sets the standard for how a lead shows up — someone whose behaviour and communication raise the bar for the whole team and give other leads something to model.
What You'll Do
- Own the operational health and availability of the globally distributed edge estate — virtual compute, backup & recovery, and the underlying data center infrastructure — against agreed service levels.
- Lead major-incident response and resolution: coordinate across engineering, vendors and site teams, drive root-cause analysis, and close the loop so the same failure doesn't recur.
- Set and enforce operational standards, runbooks and change discipline across all sites, so that "how good looks" is consistent and repeatable regardless of geography.
- Act as the senior technical escalation point across the platform stack (compute, virtualization, backup, physical infrastructure) and as the primary technical interface to strategic vendors.
- Translate operational reality into clear, honest reporting for leadership — surfacing risk early, framing decisions crisply, and owning the message.
- Drive automation and self-healing into daily operations, reducing manual toil and moving the team from reactive to proactive.
- Partner with the modernization and refresh workstreams to ensure new platforms land operable, documented and supportable from day one.
- You set the standard, visibly. You define expectations clearly and up front — "here is how this should be done" — and you hold yourself to it publicly before you hold anyone else to it.
- You communicate with clarity and calm. Under pressure, in incidents, and in front of leadership, you are the steady, articulate voice that brings order. You write and speak so that the right people understand the right thing at the right time.
- You own outcomes in the open. You take public accountability for the estate's performance — good and bad — without defensiveness or blame. People trust your word.
- You inspire by example. Other leads should look at how you operate and want to work that way. You lift the standard of those around you simply by how you show up.
- You lead beyond your desk. Your influence reaches across the global platform organisation, not just your own site or timezone.
Technical skills:
Primary (must have):
- Data center physical infrastructure: power, cooling, space, rack and connectivity
- Nutanix AOS and AHV
- Cisco compute hardware and Cisco HyperFlex
- VMware and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)
- Commvault or an equivalent enterprise backup and recovery platform
- Automation and scripting (e.g. PowerShell, Python, Ansible) to standardise operations, reduce manual toil and enable zero-touch and self-healing workflows
- Microsoft Azure
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
- Total experience: 15–20 years in IT infrastructure / data center operations.
- Relevant experience: 5–8 years in a senior lead or equivalent role operating enterprise virtualization, compute and backup platforms at scale.
- Substantial hands-on experience operating globally distributed data center services — not a single site, but a multi-region estate with 24×7 availability demands.
- A proven track record leading operations, major incidents and vendor relationships at scale.
- Demonstrable depth across the full stack above, with the credibility to be the final technical word in an escalation.
- A track record of using automation and scripting to remove manual effort and drive operations from reactive to proactive.
- Comfortable operating in a large, matrixed global organisation across timezones and cultures.
- Relevant certifications (e.g. Nutanix, VMware, Cisco) are valued; equivalent demonstrated experience is equally welcome.
We are happy to support your need for any adjustments during the application and hiring process. If you need special assistance or an accommodation to use our website, apply for a position, or to perform a job, please contact us by emailing [email protected].
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