Data Center IT Operations Program Manager

Data Center IT Operations Program Manager At Verda, we're building a fully featured European AI cloud, covering everything needed to train, experiment with, and deploy AI models at scale. We are a full-stack AI infrastructure company, meaning we design, operate, and optimize the compute powering modern AI workloads across training and inference. Our infrastructure runs on 100% renewable energy, helping build a more sustainable AI ecosystem. Join Verda while it’s still being built - not once it’s finished. About the role You will own the operating model for Verda's data centers: how IT operations run day to day across every site. Your focus is the procedures, standards, and processes that keep our compute healthy, available, and serviceable, and the discipline that lets us repeat them site after site. What You’ll Do Define and document the operating procedures technicians work from: the full IT hardware lifecycle (receiving, rack-and-stack, imaging and provisioning, break-fix, RMA, and decommissioning), captured as SOPs and runbooks that people actually follow, not shelfware Stand up the operational disciplines that keep a fleet under control: incident, change, and problem management; escalation and on-call paths; maintenance windows; and postmortems that turn every event into an improvement Own asset and inventory management: a source of truth for what's installed where, spares and consumables, and chain of custody from the receiving dock to decommission Define the metrics that tell us whether operations are working (SLAs, KPIs, and the reporting cadence around them) and drive process improvement from real data, closing the loop on root causes rather than symptoms Work across teams to make this stick: Operations technicians, Hardware, Networking, Architecture, Expansion, and the Cloud and Support functions Align standards, clarify hand-offs, and make sure a procedure defined for one site is the procedure everywhere Representative projects: author the operations playbook for a new site, the full set of SOPs and runbooks technicians work from on day one; stand up incident and change management across sites so every event is triaged, tracked, and reviewed to a single standard; build the asset and inventory process from receiving dock to decommission, with a source of truth every team trusts; define the operations KPI set and reporting cadence that turns raw tickets into concrete process improvements What We’re Looking For Experience defining and running operational processes in a data center, cloud, or large-scale IT environment Command of IT service management fundamentals: incident, change, problem, and asset/configuration management (ITIL or equivalent), without being dogmatic about frameworks Track record writing SOPs, runbooks, and standards that technicians genuinely use, and improving them from operational data Working knowledge of the IT hardware lifecycle: receiving, rack-and-stack, provisioning, break-fix, RMA, and decommissioning Strong cross-functional coordination, aligning hardware, networking, operations, and support teams on shared standards and clean hand-offs Data-driven approach to process improvement: defining KPIs and SLAs, finding root cause, and closing the loop Clear technical writing and documentation discipline Bias toward speed and ownership, comfortable making decisions with incomplete information and driving them to a repeatable result Practicalities Work mode: Hybrid, office (Helsinki, Finland or London, UK) or remote Travel: Regular travel to sites to observe operations and roll out standards Employment type: Full-time and permanent What's Next We're building fast and this role needs the right person behind it. There's no artificial deadline, but when we find who we're looking for, we move. If this sounds like your next move, apply now. Please submit your application through our Careers page. We don't accept applications sent by email. Department Data Center Operations Locations London, Helsinki, EMEA Remote status Hybrid About Verda Verda (formerly DataCrunch) is a technology company building the next generation of cloud infrastructure for AI – compute that's instant, on-demand and at scale. Headquartered in Helsinki, the company operates globally across Europe, the US and Asia. Verda employs over 100 people from nearly 30 nationalities and has raised over $200M in total funding from investors including Lifeline Ventures, byFounders, J12 Ventures, Skaala, Varma and Tesi, alongside leading financial institutions.