Data Center Technician Manager

Job description

Overview

As a Microsoft Data Center Technician Manager, you will lead a team of technicians, providing expert guidance on performing hardware deployments, diagnostics on equipment, and hardware decommissions.

You will support technician performance, prioritizing technician tasks while monitoring Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

This opportunity will allow you to model leadership principles, provide training to technicians, and accelerate your career growth in the process.

Microsoft’s Cloud Operations & Innovation (CO+I) is the engine that powers our cloud services.

As a CO+I Data Center Technician Manager, you will perform a key role in delivering the core infrastructure and foundational technologies for Microsoft's online services including Bing, Office 365, Xbox, OneDrive, and the Microsoft Azure platform.

As a group, CO+I is focused on the personal and professional development of all employees and offers training and growth opportunities including Career Rotation Programs, Diversity & Inclusion training and events, and professional certifications.

Our infrastructure is comprised of a large global portfolio of more than 200 data centers in 32 countries and millions of servers.

Our foundation is built upon and managed by a team of subject matter experts working to support services for more than 1 billion customers and 20 million businesses in over 90 countries worldwide.

With environmental sustainability and optimization at the forefront of our data center design and operations, we continue to grow and evolve as we meet the ever-changing business demands that hold Microsoft as a world-class cloud provider.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.

As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals.

Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

This role is located in either one of the following locations - Boydton, VA, Dulles, VA, Richmond, VA, Reston, VA, Sterling, VA, Manassas, VA, Bristow, VA or Ashburn, VA.

Relocation support will be provided, and successful candidates will need to relocate or reside within 50 miles of the office location.

This role is for Fully Onsite work.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications:

High school diploma, GED, or equivalent and basic knowledge of computer hardware and components
AND 3+ years experience supporting IT equipment or related technology or related experience working
with teamsOR equivalent experience

 1+ year(s) experience directing, supervising, or managing others or leading a project.

Must have ability to work 12 hours shifts, including shift assignments during non-standard business hours that may include evening, nighttime, weekends, and/or holidays.

Other Requirements:

Ability to meet Microsoft, customer and/or government security screening requirements are required for this role.

These requirements include, but are not limited to the following specialized security screenings:

Microsoft Cloud Background Check: This position will be required to pass the Microsoft Cloud background
check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Citizenship & Citizenship Verification: This position requires verification of U.S. citizenship due to
citizenship-based legal restrictions.

Specifically, this position supports United States federal, state, and/or
local United States government agency customer and is subject to certain citizenship-based restrictions
where required or permitted by applicable law.

To meet this legal requirement, citizenship will be verified
via a valid passport, or other approved documents, or verified US government Clearance.

Criminal Justice Information Services: This position may require passing a background check conducted
through the CJIS criminal justice information system by authorized local, state, and/or federal agencies.

Preferred Qualifications:

Associate's degree in Computer Science or realted field AND 6+ years experience supporting IT equipment
or related technology

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related field AND 5+ years experience supporting IT equipment or related technologyOR equivalent experience.

 3+ years experience working in a production, mission-critical 24x7x365 datacenter environment.

Applicable certifications: Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Foundation, ASICS/Inventory
Control, CompTIA (A+, Server+, Network+), Basic Structure Cabling (BSC), Certified Data Center
Professional (CDCP), Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP), Six Sigma Green Belt).

2+ years experience leading a diverse team.

Data Center Technicians M3 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $75,400 - $167,900 per year.

There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $105,800 - $185,300 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.

Find additional benefits and pay information here:Microsoft will accept applications and processes offers for these roles on an ongoing basis.

Responsibilities

People Management
• Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.
• Model - Live our culture; Embody our values; Practice our leadership principles.
• Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes; Enable success across boundaries; Help the team adapt
and learn.
• Care - Attract and retain great people; Know each individual’s capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the
growth of others.
Datacenter Operations
• Encourages the sharing of expertise in and provides guidance on standard processes and procedures for
preparing, installing, performing diagnostics, troubleshooting, replacing, and decommissioning IT
datacenter technology(ies) and equipment.

Encourages the sharing of expertise and provides guidance on
the functions of, and interactions between cabling infrastructure, network, server, and storage equipment.
Develops awareness of Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Foundation components:
Incident Management and Change Management.• Advises on and reviews suggested modifications to process and procedures to manage changes and driveimprovement in service quality and/or efficiency.

Proactively investigates, evaluates, and analyzes
changes.

Reviews Process Change Notifications (PCNs) to evaluate impact on service execution and shares
relevant information about change with stakeholders across functions and disciplines to mitigate the
impact they may have on others.

Encourages technicians to ask questions when they do not have required
information,resolves others' questions in a timely manner, and may provide feedback on changes to
processes to direct-line management, standards management teams, and/or project, program, or special
initiative managers.
• Provides guidance on, and holds a team of technicians accountable for compliance with Data Center
business unit policies, procedures, and deadlines.

Proactively reviews and provides feedback regarding
Data Center business unit policies, procedures, and deadlines.

Resolves issues related to compliance or
operational assurance activities directly, or with assistance from compliance colleagues and/or business
partners.

Provides input on improvement plan components for service delivery gaps or challenges.
• Ensures a team of technicians can complete assigned tickets efficiently and in alignment with relevant Key
Performance Indicators (KPIs) per task type.

Supports escalation of challenging or complex tickets to
internal business partners and appropriately summarizes relevant issues for communication to direct-line
management.

Coordinates and assigns tasks to technicians, and/or provides input or coordination with
appropriate program managers and direct-line management for ticket assignment automation to provide
direction as needed, to ensure work is appropriately allocated to meet Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
per task type.

Monitors progress of tickets assigned to teams of technicians and adjusts where necessary,
to meet established Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) per task type.

Analyzes data related to technicians'
performance on tickets and shares with direct-line management.
Service Delivery
• Coordinates training packages for technicians on procedures for installation, deployment, upgrade,
refresh, simple change, decommission and/or replacement of infrastructure cabling, network, storage, or
server equipment.

Provides guidance to technicians for developing an effective execution order of
assigned tasks and ensures technicians have access to tools and/or supplies required to perform work.
Investigates root causes of issues that may have negatively impacted ticket Key Performance Indicators
(KPIs) per task type, and takes proactive corrective action.
• Evaluates procedures for performing quality checks to ensure they align with compliance standards and
process adherence, and takes responsibility for impact to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) by task type of work performed by technicians.

Performs post-execution verification of grounding, staging, labeling, and cabling as needed to ensure alignment with all safety protocols, deployment standards, and planned
Network Design Templates (NDTs), taking corrective action(s) to address any non-compliance, and
validates post-execution quality or validation training has been completed by applicable technicians to
enable them.

Identifies errors in deployment standards or Network Design Templates (NDTs) and
coordinates directly with internal business partners, technologists, or subject matter experts (SMEs) to
develop corrections as needed.
• Evaluates diagnostic and troubleshooting processes and suggests improvements.

Maintains advanced
awareness of conditions, circumstances, and scenarios which may reflect significant customer or business
impact within the Data Center environment, and escalates observations of imminent incident risks or
potential situations immediately to direct-line management.
• Follows procedures to immediately engage Designated Responsible Individuals (DRIs) for appropriate
communication, reporting, and incident management of data center technical or safety related incidents
with direct-line management, internal business partners, and impacted engineering group contacts.
Participates in bridge calls to provide details on incident status and executes on-site follow-up actions as
directed if necessary.

May leverage learnings to contribute to the improvement of quality of service and
support.• Verifies compliance with standards and procedure for data-bearing devices (DBDs) destruction and/or
confirms any-and-all such devices (e.g. hard-drives, solid-state drives, flash cards, etc.) contained within
network, storage, or server equipment has been identified for eradication or destruction.

Creates
schedules for shift-based technicians to ensure positioning and availability to execute work as defined by
organizational standards, negotiates with internal team colleagues to organize project timelines, with
guidance from direct-line management, and appropriate notification to stakeholders.
• Manages assigned projects or programs to meet service delivery objectives.

Participates in pilot programs or task forces to ensure smooth implementation for future service delivery as directed.
• Proactively reviews schedules and avoids conflicts when possible.

Identifies, coordinates, manages
expectations, and offers alternatives when defining technical solutions in light of ongoing operations and
procedures (e.g., schedule, technical feasibility, policy, procedure, tools).
Managing Service
• Exercises judgment and discretion to contribute to issue tracking related to follow-up and resolution to
overall quality of service escalations and/or proactive initiatives.

Maintains responsibility for client and
technician team interactions for escalations and/or engagements between them and other internal
business partners.
• Collects and reviews appropriate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for their team to support line of
business (e.g. performance measures, long-term trends) and/or business intelligence analysis (e.g., service availability data, system health).

Shares feedback from reviews with technicians to drive improvement in meeting KPI expectations and sharing learnings from reviews with direct-line management.
• Partners with internal and external stakeholders to manage the removal of risks to personnel and/or
resource availability, performance, and compliance.
• Identifies and assigns required training as applicable across all technician job focus areas and workloads
(i.e., Break fix, Deployment, Simple Change, Decommission, IT Critical Environment) along with Personnel
Management training in a timely manner per direct-line management assignment(s) and validates
completion of assigned training by team members.

May complete additional or supplemental training to
obtain or maintain relevant industry or technical certifications and advise their team on relevant
certifications to obtain.Datacenter Work Environment
• Conducts daily safety briefings, ensuring their team members attend, and/or participates in onsite safetycommittees.

Completes required Environmental & Health Safety (EHS) training, ensures technicians
comply with EHS training completion requirements and are compliant with safety procedures (e.g.,
equipment use, lifting, electrical hazards, ladder/rolling stair use), Task Hazard Analysis (THAs) completion,and use of appropriate equipment and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for assigned tasks.

Adheres toand promotes a culture of safety, empowering technician teams to report and/or take proactive actionregarding safety concerns, near-misses, and/or incidents.

Participates in the regular cadence of proactivesafety observation reporting processes and systems and follows up with their team members as needed regarding actionable safety observations reported.
• Completes required security and data management training, ensures technicians completion of applicable
training, and maintains accountability for technician compliance with security and data management
procedures/policies.

Ensures that policies and procedures securing physical access to the data center or
network site environment(s) are appropriately enforced.

May escort third party vendors or IT support on-
premises at data centers or network sites.

Appropriately takes action and reports physical security access
concerns and/or incidents, and gathers information about such events reported by their team to inform
direct-line management and escalates to relevant stakeholders.

Participates in identifying the root causeof any physical security access violations and manages corrective actions and escalations related to
technician violations of physical security procedures or policies.
• Promotes a positive and effective team environment by modeling best practices, leading regular team
meetings, cross-discipline collaborations, and monitoring the status of work across their team to
understand the impact on other shifts/technician teams, engineering groups or internal business partner
needs, and the overall business.

Provides, responds to, and encourages providing feedback regarding on
ways to work more effectively or enhance efficiency within their team and adopts best practices shared
within-and-across shifts or technician teams.
Physical Requirements (Applies to but is not limited to US-based Data Center roles)
• Occasional climbing of ladders.
• Frequent climbing of stairs and/or ramps.
• Prolonged standing.
• Occasional lifting 50lbs.

/ 22.5kg.
• Occasional push or pull 50-75lbs.

/ 22.5-34kg.

with assistive device.
• *Normal visual acuity (near, far and peripheral with correction).
• *Normal color vision for electrical work.
• *Normal is defined via standard medical terms and applicable criteria.
Other
• Embody our culture and values.Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.Industry leading healthcareEducational resourcesDiscounts on products and servicesSavings and investmentsMaternity and paternity leaveGenerous time awayGiving programsOpportunities to network and connect

Required Skill Profession

Operations Specialties Managers