Senior Manager, IT Infrastructure

Volta; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Equity in Volta

Retirement contributions

Health benefits

Vacation days

Job summary

Volta in Palo Alto, CA seeks a Senior Manager, IT Infrastructure to lead deployment, operations and lifecycle management of large-scale data centre IT infrastructure across EMEA and collaborate with cross-functional teams to meet high-availability requirements.

You will drive automation, governance and vendor management while overseeing insourced and outsourced site teams to deliver secure, scalable and cost-efficient IT services.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Typically 10+ years' experience in IT infrastructure, data centre operations, cloud infrastructure, systems engineering, network engineering or a related discipline.
• Several years managing technical teams and leading large-scale IT infrastructure operations or transformation programmes.
• A track record of operating business-critical or mission-critical infrastructure at enterprise or hyperscale.
• Strong knowledge of data centre technologies, including servers, storage, networking and monitoring.
• Experience of disaster recovery, capacity planning, incident management and change management.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams and influencing senior stakeholders.
• Excellent written, verbal, analytical and organisational skills.
• Able to take part in or oversee an on-call and major incident response rota.

Responsibilities

• Own the deployment, operation, maintenance and lifecycle management of large-scale data centre IT infrastructure across EMEA.
• Lead infrastructure operations across compute, storage, networking and platform services as designed by Volta's CTO organisation.
• Define standards for resilient, secure and repeatable infrastructure deployments.
• Ensure Volta's IT infrastructure and site teams are ready to support high-availability services.
• Partner with the CTO architecture team and service owners to align infrastructure capabilities with business requirements.
• Oversee providers and integrators, ensuring KPIs and customer SLAs are met.

Skills

Infrastructure leadership

Hyperscale operations

Reliability

Technical decision-making

Operational excellence

Incident leadership

Vendor management

Executive communication

Talent development

Organisational design

Education

Bachelor's degree

Job description

About Volta

Volta is the category-defining, fully vertically integrated AI infrastructure platform – from capital to clusters to software, under a founder-led enterprise. Our mission is The Utility of Compute™: AI infrastructure as dependable and available as electricity, for every organization that needs it. Launched with a $10B strategic partnership with one of the leading frontier AI labs, a Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, and a $5B AI Infrastructure Fund, Volta is building the infrastructure layer of the AI era from the ground up. We are 100+ people across London, Palo Alto, and New York, with rapid growth expectations to hundreds.

About The Role

Reporting to the Regional Data Centre Operations Director, EMEA, the Senior Manager, IT Infrastructure will lead the deployment, operation and continuous improvement of IT infrastructure across Volta's AI factories in EMEA. You will oversee highly available, secure and scalable compute, network and facilities-adjacent technology services across multiple data centre campuses. The role combines strong technical expertise with operational leadership, commercial judgement, vendor management and the ability to run infrastructure programmes at scale. You will lead the IT infrastructure site teams, set operational standards, drive automation and make sure IT infrastructure services meet demanding requirements for availability, performance, security, capacity and cost efficiency.

What You Will Be Doing

Infrastructure leadership

• Own the deployment, operation, maintenance and lifecycle management of large-scale data centre IT infrastructure across EMEA

• Lead infrastructure operations across compute, storage, networking and platform services, as designed by Volta's CTO organisation

• Define standards for resilient, secure and repeatable infrastructure deployments

• Ensure Volta's IT infrastructure and site teams, both insourced and outsourced, are ready to support high-availability services

• Partner with the CTO architecture team, operations engineering, security, facilities and product teams to align infrastructure capabilities with business requirements

• Oversee Volta's providers and integrators, holding them to strict KPIs and making sure customer SLAs are fully met

Data centre operations

• Oversee the operational readiness and performance of data centre IT infrastructure environments

• Establish and maintain processes for installation, maintenance, upgrades, decommissioning and asset lifecycle management of Volta's AI platforms

• Ensure effective capacity planning for network connectivity, infrastructure and hardware availability

• Manage incident, problem, change and event management processes for IT infrastructure services

• Lead or support large-scale event response, service restoration, root cause analysis and corrective action programmes

• Maintain operational documentation, playbooks, escalation procedures and disaster recovery plans for IT infrastructure

• Ensure infrastructure environments are audit-ready and meet regulatory, contractual and internal control requirements

Reliability, security and resilience

• Set service-level objectives, KPIs and operational health metrics for IT infrastructure services, including for partners and providers SENIOR MANAGER, IT INFRASTRUCTURE VOLTA / JOB DESCRIPTION PAGE 3

• Drive improvements in uptime, mean time to detect, mean time to recover, change success rate, capacity utilisation and operational risk

• Ensure IT infrastructure supports business continuity, disaster recovery, backup, replication and recovery testing requirements

• Promote a culture of resilience engineering, preventative maintenance and continuous improvement

• Contribute to and review the EMEA technical risk register, making sure mitigation plans are documented, prioritised and delivered

Automation and operational excellence

• Reduce manual intervention through automation and standardised tooling where relevant

• Define IT engineering and operational standards for repeatable deployments across multiple sites and regions

• Use data and operational metrics to identify bottlenecks, recurring failures, capacity risks and opportunities to optimise

• Establish effective governance for IT infrastructure changes, technology standards and platform roadmaps

People and stakeholder management

• Promote a generative safety culture, inclusive leadership, operational discipline and knowledge sharing

• Hire, lead, develop and retain a high-performing team

• Define team structures, responsibilities, career paths, performance expectations and succession plans

• Build strong partnerships with your main internal customers: the CTO organisation and the service owners

• Communicate technical risks, investment needs, service performance and operational priorities clearly to senior leadership

• Coordinate with vendors, contractors, managed service providers and hardware manufacturers

Financial and vendor management

• Contribute to infrastructure operating and capital expenditure planning

• Manage supplier relationships, SLAs, contracts, procurement activity and vendor performance

• Identify opportunities to reduce total cost of ownership without compromising availability, security or service quality

• Track budgets, forecasts, resource utilisation and programme benefits

How success will be measured

• Infrastructure availability, reliability and performance against agreed service objectives across EMEA

• Fewer major incidents, recurring failures, unplanned outages and operational risks

• Better incident response, recovery times, change success rates and problem resolution

• Capacity and infrastructure expansion programmes delivered on schedule and within budget across EMEA

• Improved IT infrastructure utilisation and total cost of ownership

• Compliance with security, audit, resilience and operational control requirements

• Team engagement, retention, technical development and leadership effectiveness

• Strong stakeholder partnerships and customer satisfaction

What You Bring

Essential:

• A bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

• Typically 10 or more years' experience in IT infrastructure, data centre operations, cloud infrastructure, systems engineering, network engineering or a related discipline

• Several years managing technical teams and leading large-scale IT infrastructure operations or transformation programmes

• A track record of operating business-critical or mission-critical infrastructure at enterprise or hyperscale

• Strong knowledge of data centre technologies, including servers, storage, networking and monitoring

• Experience of disaster recovery, capacity planning, incident management and change management

• Experience leading cross-functional teams and influencing senior stakeholders

• Excellent written, verbal, analytical and organisational skills

• Able to take part in or oversee an on-call and major incident response rota

Desirable:

• Experience in hyperscale cloud, colocation, internet service provider, telecoms or large enterprise data centre environments

• Managing IT infrastructure across multiple regions, countries or geographically distributed sites

• Public cloud platforms and hybrid or multi-cloud operating models

• Knowledge of data centre facilities interfaces, including power, cooling, environmental monitoring, physical security and structured cabling

• IT service management frameworks, reliability engineering, and ISO 27001, SOC 2, NIST or similar control frameworks

• Relevant certifications such as ITIL, CISSP, CCNP, PMP, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or equivalent

Core competencies

• Strategic infrastructure leadership

• Hyperscale operations and systems thinking

• Reliability and resilience

• Technical decision-making

• Operational excellence

• Incident and crisis leadership

• Vendor management

• Clear executive communication

• Talent development and organisational design

• Continuous improvement and risk management

What We Offer

At Volta, we believe people do their best work when they feel supported, trusted and able to grow. We're building a company where you can make an impact, keep a healthy balance between work and life, and build a career you're proud of.
As a global team, we do our best to provide great benefits wherever you're based. While some benefits vary by country due to local regulations, we believe looking after our people is simply the right thing to do.

• Competitive salary based on the work you do here, not your previous salary

• Equity in Volta, giving you the opportunity to share in the company's long-term success

• Retirement/pension contributions

• Comprehensive health, wellbeing and insurance benefits

• Generous number of vacation days each year

Additional Information

Background Checks

All offers of employment at Volta are conditional on the satisfactory completion of pre-employment screening, which includes confirmation of your right to work, verification of your employment history and a criminal record check, where this is permitted by local law. Screening is carried out by Zinc, an accredited third-party provider, after an offer is made and all information is handled confidentially and in accordance with applicable data protection law.

Equal Opportunity

Volta is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building a diverse and inclusive team and make employment decisions based on skills, qualifications, experience and business needs. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, veteran status or any other legally protected characteristic.

Accessibility

Volta is committed to providing an accessible recruitment experience for all candidates. If you require accommodations or adjustments at any stage of the application or interview process, please contact us at [e-mail]. We will work with you to identify reasonable accommodations that enable you to participate fully in the hiring process.

Candidate Privacy Notice

By applying, you consent to the processing of your personal data for recruitment purposes in accordance with applicable data protection laws, including the UK GDPR, EU GDPR and relevant US state privacy regulations. Your data will be shared only with those involved in the hiring process and will not be used for unrelated purposes. For details, see our Recruitment & Candidate Privacy Notice.

Note to Recruitment Agencies

Volta does not accept unsolicited CVs or candidate profiles from recruitment agencies. Any unsolicited submissions, including those sent directly to hiring managers or employees, will be treated as the property of Volta. No agency fees will be payable unless a valid, signed recruitment agreement is in place, and the agency has been specifically engaged for the relevant vacancy.