Lead - Data Center & Passive Infrastructure

Airtel Africa Data center and Passive infrastructure Lead Job Description

Airtel Africa data center and passive infrastructure is a crucial component of the network organization, providing the necessary infrastructure operational support across 14 operations in Africa and improvement strategy to enable long-term growth and uptime in 53 data centers and more than 35,000 towers. The Data center and Passive Infrastructure team owns the design, planning and delivery of Airtel Africa regional infrastructure. The team’s main objective is to build the facilities that create Airtel Africa network with an end-to-end approach, ensuring the successful delivery of the critical data centers, sites, power, cooling and supporting infrastructure to ensure our customers have continual access to the innovation they rely on.


The ideal candidate will work with a diverse team of engineers, architects, construction managers, supply chain specialists, security experts, operations managers, to ensure successful delivery and operation of all passive infrastructure in our network across 14 operations in Africa. He will oversee the delivery at the highest standards for the network organization while providing service availability and uptime at the lowest possible cost for our customers.


Key job responsibilities

Airtel Africa data center and passive infrastructure team is searching for a passionate and talented Technical Program Manager and data center passive lead to support daily operations and deployment projects to improve our Data Centre and passive infrastructure. The TPM data center passive lead will lead cross functional and technical teams to operate existing infrastructure and deliver new Data Centers for the network organization. This will extend from strategy, design, budget, implementation, testing, deployment and operation, including all the dependencies needed to deliver all passive infrastructure in Airtel Africa network.


At Airtel Africa, along with technical knowledge, we expect our leaders to interact with customers, partners and suppliers to understand our business goals and priorities, and to execute rapidly, delivering high-quality results. The candidate will be comfortable in managing remote project delivery across all 14 operations in Africa and possess the ability to facilitate technical sessions to troubleshoot issues and remove barriers successfully. The TPM data center passive lead will be able to build cross-functional matrix-based teams, establish trust with a variety of stakeholders across multiple African’s operations, manage capital budgets, eliminate unnecessary activity, design solutions, remove blockers, and find creative ways to accelerate project delivery and build operation excellency for maximum uptime.


The TPM data center passive lead will be familiar with a variety of operation and project management tools, methodologies and techniques. He must be able to demonstrate experience in core project management disciplines including scope, schedule, budget, resources, quality and risk management, reporting and metric development/tracking. Other requirements include experience with MS Office, MS Project and MS SharePoint.

Basic Qualifications

5+ years of technical infrastructure management experience Ability to review technical and ambiguous problems, convey clear options and recommendations, and lead teams to decide and deliver Experience in management of complex technology infrastructure projects (data center power distribution, cooling, rectifier, UPS, batteries, generator, ATS) Responsible for ensuring maintenance/ repairs of site-critical facility infrastructure or a Data Center are planned and executed to the best interest of the business Develop and maintain method statements, standard operating procedures, emergency response procedures, preventive maintenance programs, and all technical documentation Develop a complete, deep knowledge of the design intent, operational alternatives and contingency plans related to all Data Center systems Manage the engineering and operational aspects of the Data Centers related to financial and cost control, code and regulatory compliance, personnel management, staff training and development, Health & Safety, local statutory requirements, environmental and energy management Develop and deliver the regular engineering reports and ensure adherence to contracted deliverables including SLA’s and KPI’s Providing hands on facility support where required Manage the development and delivery of the portfolio of Energy/Environmental Management Programs Manage and Coordinate activities related to hardware decommissioning, rack moves and services migration within various Data Centers Develop end-to-end project plans, drive project execution, monitor and track progress, ensure target deadlines are met Manage changes to the project scope, project schedule and ensure proper communication to all stakeholders


Preferred Qualifications

Degree in Electrical Engineering or Equivalent Multi-sites and Regional Distributed Datacenter environment experience Advanced MS Office skills, including PowerPoint, Visio Proven leadership and ability to work independently part of a larger infrastructure team Demonstrated and measurable skills in creating and driving continuous improvement initiatives To be on-call on a rotation basis shared with other engineers
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