The Senior Director of Data Center Facilities & Critical Infrastructure is accountable for the strategy, resilience, and operational excellence of the company’s global data center and colocation facilities. This role owns the end‑to‑end facilities lifecycle across enterprise‑owned and third‑party sites, ensuring uninterrupted availability of mission‑critical services while balancing risk, cost, capacity, and long‑term scalability.
This position operates as the senior authority for physical infrastructure, serving as the executive escalation point for facilities‑related risk, incidents, and strategic decisions. The role partners closely with technology, security, risk, finance, procurement, and executive leadership to ensure data center facilities enable business growth, regulatory compliance, and operational resilience.
Strategic Leadership & Accountability
- 01Define and execute the enterprise strategy for data center facilities, colocation services, and critical infrastructure operations.
- 02Own availability, resilience, safety, and compliance outcomes for all facilities supporting production workloads.
- 03Serve as the executive sponsor for major facilities initiatives including expansions, consolidations, migrations, and new site onboarding.
- 04Provide clear, data‑driven insights to executive leadership on infrastructure risk, capacity constraints, investment needs, and cost optimization opportunities.
Facilities Operations & Resilience
- 05Establish and govern standards for electrical, mechanical, HVAC, fire suppression, and physical infrastructure systems across all sites.
- 06Ensure disciplined execution of preventative, predictive, and corrective maintenance programs aligned to business criticality.
- 07Act as the final escalation point for significant facilities incidents, directing root cause analysis and enterprise‑level remediation.
- 08Drive continuous improvement in uptime, reliability, operational maturity, and safety culture.
Colocation & Vendor Governance
- 09Own the global colocation and facilities vendor strategy, including provider selection, contract governance, and performance management.
- 10Lead executive‑level relationships with colocation providers and critical service vendors.
- 11Ensure vendors consistently meet contractual SLAs, regulatory obligations, and operational expectations.
- 12Partner with procurement and legal teams to negotiate contracts, manage renewals, and optimize cost and commercial terms.
Risk, Compliance & Change Management
- 13Establish enterprise‑wide governance for facilities change management, including risk assessments, method of procedure (MOP) standards, and execution oversight.
- 14Ensure audit readiness and compliance with internal controls, regulatory requirements, and safety standards.
- 15Proactively identify, quantify, and mitigate facilities‑related risk across the global footprint.
- 16Support regulatory, internal audit, and executive risk committees with clear and defensible reporting.
Capacity, Investment & Lifecycle Planning
- 17Own long‑range capacity planning for power, cooling, and space across owned and colocation environments.
- 18Align facilities strategy with infrastructure, network, and platform roadmaps.
- 19Develop multi‑year capital and operating plans, balancing growth, resilience, and cost efficiency.
- 20Make investment recommendations grounded in risk reduction, availability improvement, and business enablement.
People Leadership & Organizational Development
- 21Lead, develop, and scale a global facilities organization, including managers, engineers, and managed service providers.
- 22Set clear expectations, accountability, and performance standards across the organization.
- 23Build a strong bench of facilities leadership through succession planning and talent development.
- 24Foster a culture of operational rigor, safety, ownership, and continuous improvement.
Qualifications & Experience
Required
- 25Extensive experience leading mission‑critical data center facilities or comparable critical infrastructure at enterprise scale.
- 26Proven executive ownership of availability, resilience, and risk in highly regulated or high‑availability environments.
- 27Deep understanding of electrical and mechanical systems supporting large‑scale data centers and colocation facilities.
- 28Demonstrated success managing global vendors, large contracts, and executive‑level escalations.
- 29Strong financial and operational acumen, including capital planning and cost management.
Preferred
- 30Experience operating across geographically distributed, hybrid (enterprise‑owned + colocation) environments.
- 31Background supporting M&A, TSA transitions, or large‑scale infrastructure transformations.
- 32Experience partnering with audit, risk, compliance, and regulatory bodies.
- 33Track record of modernizing facilities operations through automation, analytics, and standardized operating models.
What Success Looks Like
- 34Facilities risk is proactively identified, clearly communicated, and systematically reduced.
- 35Data center and colocation environments consistently meet or exceed availability and resilience expectations.
- 36Capacity and investment decisions are forward‑looking, data‑driven, and aligned to business strategy.
- 37Vendors operate as accountable partners, not unmanaged dependencies.
- 38Executive leadership has confidence in the safety, scalability, and durability of the physical infrastructure platform.
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EEOC Statement
FIS is an equal opportunity employer. We evaluate qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, genetic information, national origin, disability, veteran status, and other protected characteristics. The EEO is the Law poster is available here eeoc.gov/sites/default/files/migrated_files/employers/eeoc_self_print_poster.pdf supplement document available here dol.gov/ofccp/regs/compliance/posters/pdf/OFCCP_EEO_Supplement_Final_JRF_QA_508c.pdf
For positions located in the US, the following conditions apply. If you are made a conditional offer of employment, you will be required to undergo a drug test.
ADA Disclaimer: In developing this job description care was taken to include all
competencies needed to successfully perform in this position. However, for Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) purposes, the essential functions of the job may or may not have been described for purposes of ADA reasonable accommodation. All reasonable accommodation requests will be reviewed and evaluated on a case-by-case basis.
Sourcing Model
Recruitment at FIS works primarily on a direct sourcing model; a relatively small portion of our hiring is through recruitment agencies. FIS does not accept resumes from recruitment agencies which are not on the preferred supplier list and is not responsible for any related fees for resumes submitted to job postings, our employees, or any other part of our company.
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