Operations Leader – South Africa at Equinix

Job Summary

• Create and develop the South Africa Operations function, building the team from scratch and implementing Equinix process and practices to enable effective and outstanding operations to our customers.   As part of this the role holder will own customer impacting, day to day responsibility for operations, maintenance, and performance of data centres in the South Africa Region, part of the GEM South portfolio of countries. Responsible for day-to-day execution, capacity management, consistent response/structures, and streamlined support.

Responsibilities

Data center operations

• Drive strategic planning and priorities for data center Customer and Facilities Management operations
• Establish and track against OKRs, KPIs, SLAs, and metrics (incl. performance, capacity, availability, budget)
• Oversee on the ground incident response, problem resolution, and change management to support Equinix customer experience
• Establish critical business continuity plans, including design and implementation of disaster preparedness, detailed project management, and logistics coordination
• Establish and track safety measures to ensure safety of frontline resources
• Ensure consistent customer, vendor and staff experience and on-the-ground response across all data centers
• Contribute to the Equinix Centers of Excellence as and when appropriate and implement policies and procedures to ensure global consistency and effectiveness
• Contribute to and/or support other departments to achieve endorsed business objectives
• Coordinate with global design and construction team to expansion Site, Campus & Metro expansion strategy and ensure global consistency and effectiveness
• Ensure consistent and accurate Capacity Management of power and cooling
• Establish and manage effective Customer Project Management/Implementation, pre and post Sales contracts
• Ensure all sites achieve and remain compliant with ISO/PCIDSS/SOCI/II and other corporate accreditations
• Keep staffing levels on target in terms of number of staff as well as required skill levels
• Define, implement, and run annual financial outlooks (OPEX/CAPEX)
• Ascertain that the running costs of the data centers are kept to an optimum level whilst maintaining full service to the customers
• Own implement and drive efficiency across all sites
• Be on call for critical situations/problems within the data centers
• Focus on global consistency to ensure Equinix objectives are met and customer experience maximised

Leadership

• Shape a collaborative, transparent, and entrepreneurial culture, in tandem with the extended global operations leadership and the corporate leadership team
• Manage and motivate the team to achieve optimum uptime of data centers and maximum customer satisfaction with regards to day-to-day operations
• Focus on Customer Experience and improving Customer Satisfaction, lead team in pursuit of Customer experience improvement objectives
• Empower frontline resources to meet customer needs through incentives and process
• Contribute to Global forums as an advocate to empower Field Operations staff, towards greatest effectiveness
• Work within a regional structure (GEM-South) and contribute at a regional and global level for new initiatives/continuous improvement

Qualifications

• Demonstrated record of data center operations management and maintenance or similar leadership and cross functional management experience
• Experience optimizing a growing and evolving business – leading a small organization through a period of rapid growth, merger integration, or business transition
• Experienced in leading and operating in a matrix environment

Skills and Attributes

• Focus on execution and results – establishing ambitious standards for performance, setting goals, developing plans, following through, and holding people accountable for results
• Ability to provide thought leadership, think strategically and effectively communicate vision and influence
• Demonstrate and instil the Equinix culture and values
• Adept at balancing intense short-term pressures with overall long-term goals
• Financial acumen and ability to connect operational objectives to financial results
• Positive ‘can-do’ attitude to work
• Not easily satisfied, strives for perfection
• Flexible and Agile – ability to adapt quickly and lead team through change
• Languages: English is mandatory