Global IT Manager, Data Center IT

Job description

Serverfarm is a leading developer and operator of data centers with over 750+ locations and key customer relationships in 45 countries. We're revolutionizing how data centers operate across North America, Western Europe, and Israel, serving the world's leading technology and hyperscale companies. With Manulife Investment Management's acquisition in 2023 and our award-winning InCommand platform we're positioned for explosive growth as AI adoption and cloud migration drive unprecedented demand for data center capacity. A career at Serverfarm means being at the forefront of digital infrastructure innovation, where your work directly impacts how the world's data is managed and secured. As we target 4x growth over the next four years, you'll have unprecedented opportunities to take on new challenges, develop cutting-edge skills, and grow your career across our expanding global operations. Join our team of innovators and help shape the future of sustainable data centers while building a career without boundaries. Serverfarm is a leading developer and operator of data centers with over 750+ locations and key customer relationships in 45 countries. We're revolutionizing how data centers operate across North America, Western Europe, and Israel, serving the world's leading technology and hyperscale companies. With Manulife Investment Management's acquisition in 2023 and our award-winning InCommand platform we're positioned for explosive growth as AI adoption and cloud migration drive unprecedented demand for data center capacity. A career at Serverfarm means being at the forefront of digital infrastructure innovation, where your work directly impacts how the world's data is managed and secured. As we target 4x growth over the next four years, you'll have unprecedented opportunities to take on new challenges, develop cutting-edge skills, and grow your career across our expanding global operations. Join our team of innovators and help shape the future of sustainable data centers while building a career without boundaries. ### Key Accountabilities ### **Team Leadership** - Lead, mentor, and develop a growing distributed team of five to six systems and network professionals across multiple countries and time zones. - Own performance management, career development planning, hiring, and onboarding for the team. - Establish and enforce operating standards for documentation quality, ticket hygiene, change management, and on-call responsiveness. - Build genuine team cohesion across a workforce that is remote by default and rarely in the same room — deliberate communication rhythm, clear ownership, and shared standards. ### **Operational Ownership** - Own the availability, performance, and lifecycle of data center IT infrastructure across the global portfolio — server, storage, virtualization, network, and monitoring. - Ensure consistent execution of backup and restore validation, patching, monitoring coverage, and access management across all sites. - Own major incident response: coordinate the response, drive root cause analysis, and ensure remediation actions are completed rather than merely logged. - Manage the vendor and integrator relationships that support site IT — hold partners to their contractual commitments and to a professional standard of delivery. - Drive down alert noise and eliminate recurring incidents rather than absorbing them as routine. ### **Project and Buildout Delivery** - Lead IT scope for new facility deployments and expansions — planning, procurement, structured cabling coordination, IDF and MMR standup. - Coordinate IT delivery against construction and commissioning schedules, and escalate early and clearly when IT's window is being compressed. - Manage the technical standards library — SOPs, build standards, naming and addressing conventions, and site documentation — and hold the team to it. - Partner with Corporate IT, Security & Compliance, Controls, and Operations to ensure site delivery is aligned across functions. - Manage hardware refresh cycles, capacity planning, IT capital and operating budget input for your area. ### Required Qualifications - Seven or more years in systems administration, network administration, or infrastructure engineering, including at least two years leading or managing technical staff. - Demonstrated experience managing a distributed or remote team across multiple time zones. - Working proficiency — credible, not necessarily expert — across Windows Server, Linux, virtualization, enterprise storage, and IP networking. You must be able to hold a technical conversation with your team, evaluate a design, and judge whether a proposed fix is sound. - Experience owning incident management and root cause analysis for business-critical infrastructure. - Track record of establishing and sustaining operational standards and documentation in an environment that previously lacked them. - Strong written and verbal communication, including the ability to brief non-technical stakeholders and executives clearly. - Willingness to travel to sites across North America and Europe as project schedules require.