Data Center Manager

About the Position

• Northern Trust is seeking a Data Center Site Operations Manager for its U.S. Data Center Management operations, which support financial infrastructures across four enterprise data center environments.
• This role is responsible for governance oversight, end-to-end management of operations, personnel, planning, facilities, coordination, change governance, audit readiness, vendor management, and continuous improvement and compliance in data asset delivery.
• The successful candidate will bring a highly connected, proven onshore operational leadership team that offers operational stability, responsiveness, and agility to ensure the resilience of global enterprise data center operations.
• The candidate will be assigned to support Northern Trust’s current data center operations while helping to implement operating practices, staffing models, and documentation, and to support current data asset operations roles—including application services, software support, infrastructure, and support processes—as Northern Trust’s data center hardware facilities, networks, and distributed data environments transition from an evolving legacy model to a more established one.
• The role requires leadership in traditional enterprise data center operations, distributed environments, and cybersecurity operations—where these areas overlap.

Principal Responsibilities

Data Center Operations and Facility Management

• Lead efforts to ensure site operational readiness across assigned enterprise data center facilities, guaranteeing the effective operation of financial infrastructure support services.
• Provide leadership for site governance, oversight of operational responsibilities, staffing models, coordination, hardware lifecycle, and sub-task data center support activities.
• Support enterprise infrastructure and support programs involving service consoles, computing, storage, networking, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, and other operational edge services.
• Monitor physical inventory levels and operational data storage using CDC and BMC tools; create ad hoc but systematic platforms, twin mirroring events, and hardware/service environments.
• Enforce disciplined project-planning standards throughout the data center environment, including cost management, facilities, technical readiness, and compliance tracking.
• Support operations departments in “first-call” data center operations, site operations, troubleshooting, or infrastructure liaison as the Technology Support Center.
• Train new hires and business units, as needed.
• Lead and manage the data center management team, including on-site staff, project support resources, contractors, users, and other day-to-day operations.
• Serve as a catalyst for proactive initiatives that can support growth and future aspects of data center operations, through evaluation or cross-functional coordination.
• Ability to identify data center capacity that can support ongoing enterprise future-state requirements for infrastructure hosting environments.

Change Technologies, Assets, and/or Facilities

• Someone who continuously improves the data center workload/case model plays a role in IT service management and storage program delivery.
• Drive workshops, changes, event plans, and gap improvement activities over the medium term.
• Recommendations, staffing, and vendor selection evaluations based on operating budgets.
• Develop physical or virtual network development plans that include business continuity.
• Create documentation for sensitive third-party activities that involved new regions, migration, standards, and pre-bid strategy reviews.
• Coordinate with partner site roles and support groups to track and deliver results at hybrid, distributed, and specifically cloud-based computing sites under evaluation, as well as for projects in operations.
• Tracks that vary depending on new site operational roles, expansion roles, and changes in technical readiness.

Audit Readiness and Documentation Oversight

• Maintain an auditor-ready operational overview of data service deployment, service templates, and time-bound compliance.
• Oversee vendor availability commitment documentation, including SLAs, response readiness, contacts, proactive alerts/conditions, and follow-up on task prioritization.
• Ensure that the Enterprise Data Center Management documentation covers staff, contract terms, business continuity, and vendor assignments.
• Support audit trends, service requests, audit reviews, documentation readiness, and update validation activities for data center operations.
• Promote a culture of operational discipline, operational oversight, and process consistency with respect to the term.

Facility Management & Controls Oversight

• Provide a forecast of the administrative activities required to maintain the data center platform, including space/bay occupancy and power metrics budget plans.
• Comply with internal automated procurement, safety, and vendor site-equipment-role manuals, as well as service roles, in accordance with the operational demands of project-level operations teams.