Regional Director of Operations - EMEA

About Volta

Volta is the category-defining, fully vertically integrated AI infrastructure platform – from capital to clusters to software, under a founder-led enterprise. Our mission is The Utility of Compute™: AI infrastructure as dependable and available as electricity, for every organization that needs it. Launched with a $10B strategic partnership with one of the leading frontier AI labs, a Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, and a $5B AI Infrastructure Fund, Volta is building the infrastructure layer of the AI era from the ground up.

We are 100+ people across London, Palo Alto, and New York, with rapid growth expectations to hundreds.

Regional Data Centre Operations Director, EMEA

Location:
Europe

Department:
Data Centre Site Operations, EMEA

Reports to: VP, Data Centre Operations

Direct reports:
Data Centre Manager, Logistics Manager, Asset and Inventory Manager

About The Role

Reporting to the VP, Data Centre Operations, the Regional Data Centre Operations Director is responsible for the technical oversight of day-to-day data centre operations and service delivery across Volta's EMEA portfolio. The scope covers data centre management, data centre services delivery, third party vendor and subcontractor management, and customer engagement.

You will be accountable for every operational and service aspect of Volta's data centres across EMEA, leading the Data Centre Manager, Logistics Manager and Asset and Inventory Manager.

What You Will Be Doing

Leading the organisation

• Provide strategic direction to site management, facility and IT infrastructure, logistics, asset and inventory, and services teams

• Build the capability of each department (site operations, logistics, IT infrastructure, asset and inventory, services) and drive operational excellence across the portfolio

• Review and sign off all high-risk activities across the portfolio, such as DNO outages, high-risk project works, capacity upgrades, and customer fit-outs, deployments and product refreshes

• Ensure Volta's data centres are fully compliant with local and regional regulations at all times

• Enforce and continually improve Volta's operational standards, processes and procedures

• Act as the senior escalation point across EMEA, providing guidance, support and coaching

• Lead for operations in key customer, vendor and leadership meetings across EMEA

• Work with Volta's operational engineering team to improve data centre design and operations

• Drive energy efficiency programmes and initiatives across EMEA

• Ensure operational items on the risk register are managed, mitigated and reduced across the portfolio

• Represent Volta Operations in external forums where relevant, including environmental agencies and authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs)

• Demonstrate Volta's values: agility, accountability, continuous improvement, teamwork and trust

Operations pillars

You will be fully accountable for implementing the four pillars of the Operations department:

• Safety first, safety for all

• Security for people and assets

• Availability of Volta services, always

• Efficiency built natively into operations

In practice, this means you will:

• Support site teams to deliver zero downtime on all site activities through proper risk analysis and mitigation

• Understand the implications of customer contractual SLAs for Volta's operations and services

• Ensure operations teams and service providers are ready to deliver fully against SLAs

• Track the health of the EMEA operations organisation through relevant KPIs

• Ensure high-risk activities are well orchestrated and controlled in line with safety rules and Volta's operating principles

• Resolve escalations from site operations teams and vendors

• Embed productivity as an integral part of operational processes

• Manage critical vendors at senior level, including…