Senior Vice President, Mission Critical Operations, NA

Vantage Data Centers•San Antonio, TX

3d•$330,000 - $360,000•Onsite

About The Position

Vantage Data Centers powers, cools, protects and connects the technology of the world’s well-known hyperscalers, cloud providers and large enterprises. Developing and operating across North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific, Vantage has evolved data center design in innovative ways to deliver dramatic gains in reliability, efficiency and sustainability in flexible environments that can scale as quickly as the market demands. The Mission Critical Operations (MCO) department is responsible for the safe, secure, and uninterrupted operation of Vantage’s North America data center portfolio. The organization spans Site Operations, Field Engineering (including Reliability Engineering and Automation Controls), Physical Security, and Business Operations. MCO operates in highly interdependent, always-on environments where availability, safety, speed of execution, and decision-making under pressure are critical to customer trust and business continuity. The Senior Vice President, Mission Critical Operations is the senior executive accountable for the safe, secure, and reliable operation of Vantage’s North America data center portfolio. This leader owns the day-to-day operating system across Site Operations, Field Engineering, Physical Security, and Business Operations, with direct accountability for availability, customer commitments, operational performance, and execution at scale. This is a large, field-based organization spanning approximately 400–600 employees across multiple campuses, regions, and disciplines. The SVP is responsible for scaling the leadership structure, operating cadence, and accountability model required to support a rapidly growing portfolio with consistency and discipline. A core expectation of this role is to continuously raise the standard of operations across the portfolio—strengthening consistency, sharpening execution, and improving performance over time. This leader will set that standard and bring the organization along, building alignment and ownership across teams, functions, and sites. This role requires a strong people leader who can build and develop a multi-layer leadership team while setting a clear standard for performance and accountability. The successful candidate will be credible in the field, effective with customers, and capable of operating at the executive level in a high-consequence, fast-scaling environment.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Business, or related field; advanced degree preferred.
15+ years of experience leading large-scale, field-based operations or technical organizations.
10+ years of senior leadership experience managing multi-site, multi-function teams.
Proven experience building and scaling organizations of comparable size and complexity (approximately 400–600 employees).
Experience leading 24x7, high-availability operations with direct accountability for uptime, customer commitments, and operational risk.
Strong working knowledge of critical infrastructure environments, including electrical, mechanical, controls, and building systems operations.
Experience with incident response, emergency operations, change management, and operational readiness for new sites or expansions.
Demonstrated ability to use KPIs, SLAs, and operating reviews to drive performance, accountability, and consistency across a distributed portfolio.
Demonstrated ability to raise performance standards over time while building alignment across teams and functions.
Exceptional people leadership capability, including building leadership teams, developing talent, and creating alignment across distributed organizations.
Demonstrated ability to lead through growth, complexity, and ambiguity.
Strong communication skills with the ability to operate effectively from the field to executive-level forums.
Financial acumen including budget ownership and cost/risk tradeoff management.

Nice To Haves

Advanced degree preferred.

Responsibilities

Own 24x7 operating performance across the North America portfolio, including safety, security, availability, customer commitments, and escalation discipline.
Lead Site Operations, Field Engineering, Physical Security, and Business Operations as one integrated operating organization.
Establish and inspect the operating cadence, KPIs, SLAs, operational reviews, and escalation mechanisms required to manage performance, risk, and reliability across the fleet.
Drive availability and reliability outcomes through disciplined execution, risk management, and continuous improvement.
Continuously elevate the standard of operations by reinforcing clear expectations, identifying gaps, and driving consistency in execution across all sites and teams.
Build shared ownership for performance across the organization, ensuring leaders at every level understand expectations and are accountable for outcomes.
Lead incident response and executive escalation for critical operational events, ensuring clear decision-making, communication, recovery, and follow-through.
Serve as the executive point of accountability for customer-facing performance and critical operational escalations.
Build and scale a distributed operational organization of approximately 400–600 employees across multiple regions and campuses.
Develop and strengthen a multi-layer leadership structure, including VP, Director, and Manager levels, with clear succession depth.
Set a high bar for people leadership, driving accountability, capability building, and performance management across all levels.
Ensure Field Engineering is focused on infrastructure performance, maintenance strategy, operational reliability, and execution quality, while maintaining strong partnership with Design and Construction.
Ensure Physical Security is fully integrated into daily operations, incident response, and site readiness.
Direct the Business Operations function to enable scale, including vendor management, service support, operational reporting, and process discipline.
Partner with Finance to manage operating and capital budgets and make disciplined tradeoffs between cost, risk, and reliability.
Lead operational readiness execution for new sites, expansions, and major infrastructure changes, ensuring teams, procedures, staffing, and escalation paths are in place prior to customer-impacting operations.
Partner across Design, Construction, Enterprise functions, and Customer Experience to align execution and outcomes.
Lead through ambiguity, setting direction and making decisions where precedent does not exist.
Represent operations in executive forums, with customers, and across the organization.
Additional duties as assigned by Management.

Benefits

medical, dental, and vision coverage
life and AD&D
short and long-term disability coverage
paid time off
employee assistance
participation in a 401k program that includes company match
many other additional voluntary benefits
above market total compensation package
comprehensive suite of health and welfare, retirement, and paid leave benefits exceeding local expectations
array of benefits, recognition, training and development