Vice President, Data Center Operations
United States - Remote•United StatesNorth America•February 12, 2026
Job Summary:Provide leadership and direction for Rackspace’s data centers and migration team. Responsibility includes leading a large global organization, setting strategic direction, optimizing data center and network capacity, and optimizing cost structures while maximizing performance and reliability. This also includes managing expansions, migrations and consolidations, critical maintenances, defining operational processes and ensuring each facility and function is maintained in accordance with company standards and best practices. The Vice President, Data Center Operations is responsible for ensuring standards are the highest in the industry, following company change control policies, minimizing unexpected customer downtime, overseeing all critical incidents, problems and changes across Rackspace, and inspiring a constant drive for process improvement. Responsible for adhering to company security policies and procedures and any other relevant policies and standards as directed.
Critical Competencies:
- Ongoing measurement of team performance with a view to meeting SLAs, delivering 99.999% uptime for data center and network systems, and evidence of continuous improvement.
- A highly engaged and motivated Operations team focused on operational discipline.
- Best-in class standards with excellent adherence to these standards across all teams.
- Effective timely, and accurate roll-out and review of policies and standards.
- Incident rates below historical averages, RCA action closure, and change policy adherence.
- Up-to-date and accurate tracking of incidents and uptime matched with robust root cause analysis.
- Effective and efficient use of space, power, cooling, and CAPEX.
- Accurate space planning reports and budget plans.
- Excellent communication between the DC and other teams and high feeling of goodwill between the teams.
Key Responsibilities
- Ensure customer SLAs and uptime deliverables are surpassed.
- Lead cross functional activities designed to improve the performance of the operational teams.
- Collaborate with the various teams to drive optimal efficiency through adherence to global processes, World-Class housekeeping, and continuous improvement.
- Partner closely with other business units to coordinate key activities and opportunities to streamline our performance and reduce the friction associated with working across separate departments.
- Closely track incident trends and partner with all teams across Rackspace as necessary to drive improvement.
- Create and maintain reliable and accurate data for performance monitoring and reporting including productivity, quality, and customer experience.
- Leverage this information to drive the necessary actions.
- Manage global data center and network capacity levels and lead activities to ensure our capacity is available in the right regions and yet optimized within each DC to minimize total CAPEX.
- Take an active role in the design and build-out of new data centers and network environments.
- Implement quality systems across the Operational teams to advance the teams to becoming World- Class.
- Host current and potential customers at the Castle or online by presenting to them an overview of our data centers during their tours or audits.
- Act as an escalation path and leader for any incidents or events involving the data center or network operations teams.
- Continuous improvement across teams driven through standardized methods and cross-team collaboration.
- Fanatical customer tour experience and solid and accurate audit documentation.
- Data center incidents are managed effectively with strong communication and timely root cause resolution.
Knowledge
- Strong, personal leadership and executive presence.
- In-depth experience managing critical services facilities.
- In-depth experience and understanding of DC Operations.
- Good understanding of IT infrastructure and hardware.
- Good understanding of Mechanical and Electrical Principles.
Skills
- Strong organizational skills and the ability to set priorities in a high-pressure environment.
- A strong commitment to exceptionally high standards in the work environment.
- Ability to seek out areas for improvement as well as planning and enacting such changes.
- Ability to communicate effectively across all levels of the business.
- Establish and maintain effective working relationships with all leaders, Rackers, suppliers and others encountered in the course of work.
- Detail orientated with a genuine passion for service excellence.
Education
- High school diploma or equivalent required.
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering required, advanced degree preferred
Experience
- At least 10 years experience in a similar role with responsibility for a data center or critical services facility.