Data Centre Manager

Teraco – A Digital Realty Company; Gauteng; On-site; ZAR 400,000 - 500,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading data centre provider in Gauteng is seeking a Data Centre Manager to oversee operations, maintain critical infrastructure, and ensure client satisfaction. This role involves managing staff, ensuring compliance with best practices, and driving continuous improvements. The ideal candidate has extensive data centre experience and strong leadership skills. Competitive package offered.

Qualifications

• Minimum 5 years relevant data centre experience.
• Extensive knowledge on Data Centre environments and critical infrastructure systems.
• Experience of Data Centre KPIs.

Responsibilities

• Lead data centre operations and ensure 24x7 functionality.
• Manage teams for equipment maintenance and customer service.
• Ensure compliance with industry best practices.

Skills

Data Centre Management

Client Satisfaction

Budget Management

People Management

Technical Problem Solving

Education

Electrical and/or mechanical qualification

Cabling qualification

Tools

Data Centre infrastructure systems knowledge

Job description

Overview

Company: Teraco Data Environments

Location: Gauteng

Job Reference Number: DCMJB

Department: Infrastructure Management

Business Unit: Information Technology

Job Type: Permanent

Positions Available: 1

Salary: Market Related

Job Description

The Data Centre Manager is the leader of data centre operations, responsible for 24x7 operations of the data centre facility, in accordance with industry best practice and company policies & standards. The incumbent manages and supervises teams of employees within the Data Centre.

Purpose of the Role: The role is required to oversee equipment maintenance, inventory, customer service, contractor management and employee management. Your versatility will be your greatest asset as you deliver mission-critical support and empower our clients to harness the full power of Teraco offerings.

Responsibilities

• Data Centre Management
• Information Security
• Responsible for equipment maintenance tasks such as managing and installing custom upgrades for clients, replacing cables, components and accessories
• Conduct working methods to ensure zero capacity incidents, and to maintain agreed PUE levels
• Ensure that records, drawings and schematics of the data centre environment/s are maintained
• Evaluate the best practices for design and maintenance
• Supervise a team of technicians to ensure smooth operation of the facility
• Manage working methods to ensure that all SLA and MSA’s are achieved
• Ensure that planned and corrective maintenance is carried out according to predefined standards and schedules
• Share knowledge and best practices across all Data Centres by building close relationship with other DC Managers and peers
• Expected to improve current processes, and introduce automation with aim towards simplification
• Manages escalated support cases and leads appropriate internal technical resources and/or 3rd party vendors to resolution
• Management of data centre infrastructure to provide a concurrently maintainable, cost effective system supporting 99.999% electrical uptime and 99.99% mechanical uptime
• Management of data centre cabling infrastructure supporting 99.99% uptime
• Active participation in new data centre builds or expansions
• Monitoring and alerting of all critical components
• Ensuring comprehensive Root Cause analysis are completed for all incidents/outages
• White space capacity planning
• Quick responses to potentially critical situations
• 3rd party vendor management and service delivery
• Active involvement in network, physical and cyber security matters
• Compliance, Audit & Risk
• Ensure compliance is maintained incorporating industry best practices
• Ensure data centre facilities best practices are enforced, maintained and improved
• Ensure data Centre cleaning standards are enforced and maintained
• Implement company and departmental policies, processes and work instructions as per the agreed quality and timeline/RFS
• Risk identification and mitigation
• Ensuring adherence to all relevant standards and policies
• Active involvement in all audits
• Strong adherence to process
• Ensure that inter-departmental OLA’s (Operational Level Agreement) are met
• Identify and manage risks with regards Teraco’s information assets & systems. This includes risks in regards confidentiality, availability and integrity.

Skills and Experience

Finance

• Forecasting of future spend
• Monitoring and managing of budgetary spend
• Budgetary reporting

Leadership

• Innovate and make decisions on your own, but also know how to take direction when it is given
• People management
• Active involvement with staff onboarding
• Guide and develop staff by working with HR to ensure skills, training and performance requirements are met
• Defining of personal development plans for direct reports
• Defining of measurable KPI’s for direct reports
• Develop and grow relationships with other business units
• Support and adherence to BEE targets when onboarding new resources
• Effective communication across all relevant platforms
• Excellent communication skills and ability to interact professionally with a diverse group of clients, colleagues and staff
• Interact with all levels of the organization in a professional, and tactful manner
• Provide guidance and mentorship to direct and indirect reporting staff

Administrative duties

• Scheduling of employee shifts, standby and after hour rosters
• Ensuring compliance with internal policies and regulations
• Change and incident management
• Ensure adherence to all established guidelines and management practices for employees
• Occupational Health and Safety responsibilities
• Reporting accurately, as per agreed format, quality and timelines
• Outstanding organizational skills, ability to prioritize effectively, and experience with technical project management

Client satisfaction

• Ensure client satisfaction by providing an optimal level of customer service, in line with company objectives
• Client support responsibilities can include, but is not limited to, client relations, responding to client inquiries and coordinating with other organizations
• Meeting of defined client survey and reporting targets
• Ability to understand client urgency and sensitivity of problem/incident/request

Behaviour

• Adopt a mindset of continuous improvement
• Lead by example
• Be on the lookout for constant process improvements
• Growing our people
• Delivering to our shareholders
• Respecting each other
• Embracing diversity
• Upholding the highest levels of integrity
• Serving our clients
• Highly service-oriented, reliable, responsible, self-motivated, and enthusiastic
• Ability to work productively in cross-functional teams or resourcefully and independently as an individual
• Focused on continued learning and self-development

General

• Open to provide after-hours support as needed for significant issues
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Excellent technical abilities
• Proactive problem solving

Qualifications And Experience

• Electrical and/or mechanical qualification preferable
• Cabling qualification preferable
• Minimum 5 years relevant data centre experience
• +5 years’ experience, managing teams, including line management, appraisals, performance reviews, hiring new team members, participating in disciplinary matters, financial management, etc.
• Extensive knowledge on Data Centre environments and critical infrastructure systems e.g. Cabling, Cooling, Power
• Experience of Data Centre KPIs (incident ticket related matters, time to solve tickets, physical security, infrastructure metrics, staff, safety, overall operations)