Data Center IT Operations Program Manager

Data Center IT Operations Program Manager

Full-Time 60000 - 80000 £ / year (est.) No working from home possible
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At a Glance

  • Tasks: Own the operating model for data centres, ensuring smooth IT operations across all sites.
  • Company: Join Verda, a pioneering AI cloud company focused on sustainability and innovation.
  • Benefits: Enjoy a hybrid work environment, competitive salary, and opportunities for professional growth.
  • Other info: Dynamic role with opportunities for travel and collaboration across teams.
  • Why this job: Be part of building a cutting-edge AI infrastructure that makes a real-world impact.
  • Qualifications: Experience in data centre operations and strong IT service management skills required.

The predicted salary is between 60000 - 80000 £ per year.

At Verda, we're building a fully featured European AI cloud, covering everything needed to train, experiment with, and deploy AI models at scale. We are a full-stack AI infrastructure company, meaning we design, operate, and optimize the compute powering modern AI workloads across training and inference. Our infrastructure runs on 100% renewable energy, helping build a more sustainable AI ecosystem. Join Verda while it’s still being built - not once it’s finished.

About the role

You will own the operating model for Verda's data centers: how IT operations run day to day across every site. Your focus is the procedures, standards, and processes that keep our compute healthy, available, and serviceable, and the discipline that lets us repeat them site after site.

What You’ll Do

  • Define and document the operating procedures technicians work from: the full IT hardware lifecycle (receiving, rack-and-stack, imaging and provisioning, break-fix, RMA, and decommissioning), captured as SOPs and runbooks that people actually follow, not shelfware.
  • Stand up the operational disciplines that keep a fleet under control: incident, change, and problem management; escalation and on-call paths; maintenance windows; and postmortems that turn every event into an improvement.
  • Own asset and inventory management: a source of truth for what's installed where, spares and consumables, and chain of custody from the receiving dock to decommission.
  • Define the metrics that tell us whether operations are working (SLAs, KPIs, and the reporting cadence around them) and drive process improvement from real data, closing the loop on root causes rather than symptoms.
  • Work across teams to make this stick: Operations technicians, Hardware, Networking, Architecture, Expansion, and the Cloud and Support functions.
  • Align standards, clarify hand-offs, and make sure a procedure defined for one site is the procedure everywhere.

Representative projects:

  • Author the operations playbook for a new site, the full set of SOPs and runbooks technicians work from on day one.
  • Stand up incident and change management across sites so every event is triaged, tracked, and reviewed to a single standard.
  • Build the asset and inventory process from receiving dock to decommission, with a source of truth every team trusts.
  • Define the operations KPI set and reporting cadence that turns raw tickets into concrete process improvements.

What We’re Looking For

  • Experience defining and running operational processes in a data center, cloud, or large-scale IT environment.
  • Command of IT service management fundamentals: incident, change, problem, and asset/configuration management (ITIL or equivalent), without being dogmatic about frameworks.
  • Track record writing SOPs, runbooks, and standards that technicians genuinely use, and improving them from operational data.
  • Working knowledge of the IT hardware lifecycle: receiving, rack-and-stack, provisioning, break-fix, RMA, and decommissioning.
  • Strong cross-functional coordination, aligning hardware, networking, operations, and support teams on shared standards and clean hand-offs.
  • Data-driven approach to process improvement: defining KPIs and SLAs, finding root cause, and closing the loop.
  • Clear technical writing and documentation discipline.
  • Bias toward speed and ownership, comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and driving them to a repeatable result.

Practicalities

  • Work mode: Hybrid, office (Helsinki, Finland or London, UK) or remote.
  • Travel: Regular travel to sites to observe operations and roll out standards.
  • Employment type: Full-time and permanent.

What's Next

We're building fast and this role needs the right person behind it. There's no artificial deadline, but when we find who we're looking for, we move.

Data Center IT Operations Program Manager employer: Verda

Verda is an exceptional employer that fosters a vibrant multicultural work environment, making it an ideal place for a Technical Account Manager to thrive. With competitive cash and equity compensation, along with opportunities to collaborate with innovative AI companies, employees are encouraged to grow and develop their skills while managing impactful technical relationships. The company's commitment to enhancing customer experience and providing robust support ensures that team members feel valued and empowered in their roles.

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Contact Details:

Verda Recruitment Team

We think you need these skills to ace Data Center IT Operations Program Manager

Operational Process Definition
IT Service Management (ITIL or equivalent)
SOP and Runbook Writing
IT Hardware Lifecycle Management
Cross-Functional Coordination
Data-Driven Process Improvement
KPI and SLA Definition