Subregional Director – Operations & Business Growth

Your role

The Subregional Director- Operations and Business Growth is accountable for the continuous delivery of data centre services meeting contracted client customer SLAs and adhering to external and internal compliance and policy regulations.
This role ensures operation’s activities are aligned with the company’s financial and operational objectives and advises to and implements DLRs operational strategy concerning organisation, processes and systems.
The Subregional Director- Operations and Business Growth leverages leadership qualities to positively influence colleagues to embrace the company's operating objectives

What you'll do

 Functional:

• Works with the Group Manager Market Operations or Director Operations in other markets / countries to ensure consistent implementation of the global operating model in the market / Subregion.
• Responsible and accountable for Subregional operational metrics, including, but not limited to, financial performance, uptime, and standards compliance.
• Review and align on market / country specific deviations (where required)
• Identify synergies in operational service delivery and utilize skills and operational resources across market / country borders whereby the synergy initiatives are aligned in advance with the local Ops management.
• Establish working relationships between all stakeholders across the markets or subregion and with global and regional management and functional leaders.
• Ensure the collaboration of the market or subregional functional teams and resolve potential conflict.
• Ensure information received by global / regional functional leaders to be conveyed to the markets or countries including providing a consolidated view of the markets or countries in the region back to regional and global teams.
• Involved in technological roll outs and provide market or subregional input contribution.
• Develop collaboration of the market or subregional operational leadership teams
• Actively monitor data center market conditions, operations, and drivers within assigned Subregion, and participate in industry events.
• Acts as a point of escalation, supporting Operations Teams during complex incidents to drive communication with customers and suppliers through to resolution.
• Ensure Operational policies are being implemented and adhered to.

Managerial:

• Direct diverse operations teams to support 24/7 operations of data centers within the assigned subregion. Operations are inclusive of critical infrastructure management, property management and customer implementation services.
• Work with global and regional leadership, process owners and functional stakeholders to understand and provide input to business developments and initiatives (organization, process, systems)
• Having ownership that global standards will be implemented and accountable for maintaining standards across reliability, maintenance, asset management, change management and site acceptance
• Take owner and leadership for corporate accountabilities as assigned by the regional VP Operations of Subregional Managing Director D (e.g. Health & Safety, Public Reporting)

Customer:

• Acts as highest market / subregional escalation point for operational matters.
• Liaises with strategic customers to foster the management relationship and support business development via excellent service provisioning.
• Collaborate with asset management and sales to grow the business including supporting and participating in origination activity, sales and investor tours and customer business reviews.

 People:

• Acts as role model for corporate values and implements these with the operations workforce.
• Set goals consistent with global operations targets with the Group Manager Market Operations / Director Operations.
• Develops leadership skills and supports succession planning and appointment.
• Achieves effective cooperation between the teams within the Operations department.

Financial:

• Accountable for the Operations budget end-to-end, including associated improvements.
• Reviews and signs of the annual operations budget (HC, Opex, Capex) together with the Group manager market Operations / Director Operations.
• Accountable for cost savings through optimizations and improvements in operations, as well as through procurement.

Compliance:

• Ensures the support of the market / country Operational teams with auditing and reporting efforts to support DLRs commitment to quality and other related certifications.
• Ensure all technically required checks are completed and certifications are achieved.
• Ensure proper and timely reporting of all legally required technical operations information to public authorities.
• Ensures the support for energy efficiency and sustainability programs required by legislation.
• Support Regional and Global Standards teams in the development, deployment, and compliance of established processes.

Asset Portfolio and Expansion:

• Drive growth and optimisation of the company’s data center asset portfolio.
• Oversee operational performance across existing sites and identify capacity-enhancement opportunities.
• Partner with commercial teams to evaluate, model, and execute new site developments or acquisitions.
• Apply strong commercial judgement to investment decisions and asset profitability.
• Ensure all facilities meet reliability, sustainability, and compliance standards as the portfolio scales.

Power Usage and Energy Market responsibilities:

• Oversee power usage across all data centers with expert knowledge of UK and Ireland energy markets.
• Interpret and optimise power consumption patterns to enhance efficiency and resilience.
• Manage relationships with utility providers and assess commercial implications of energy contracts.
• Support capacity planning and sustainability commitments through informed energy strategy.
• Integrate commercial and operational considerations to maintain power cost competitiveness.

Process Management:

• Establish, refine, and enforce standardised procedures across all critical operations.
• Ensure consistency, reliability, and compliance in maintenance, incident response, and service delivery.
• Translate strategic and commercial objectives into repeatable, auditable workflows.
• Drive continuous improvement and risk reduction through disciplined process governance.
• Support scalable operations that maintain uptime and operational excellence.

 Business Acumen and Growth:

• Apply strong business acumen to align operational decisions with commercial strategy.
• Interpret financial drivers, market trends, and customer needs to inform operational planning.
• Identify opportunities for expansion, efficiency gains, and value creation across the portfolio.
• Guide investment decisions and asset optimization through commercially informed leadership.
• Support long-term profitability, competitiveness, and sustainable growth in the UK and Ireland.

Other:

• Ensure H&S procedures and regulations within Operations are always adhered to.
• Execute other special projects/assignments as directed by the Regional VP Operations and/or Subregional Managing Director.

 Additional Duties and Responsibilities

• Supports Sales in important / complex sales cycles
• Actively engages during Build Stage of new Data Centres

What you’ll need

Hard skills:

• Master’s degree education: MBA and or other advance degree and/or certifications are preferred.
• Strong previous experience of being in a similar role in multinational global organisations.
• Experienced in implementing change and driving continuous improvement.
• Demonstrated ability to lead and manage cross-functional teams in a global environment.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills
• Strong financial and budget acumen capabilities (CAPEX, OPEX), including a demonstrated history in analytics and financial and operating performance management and reporting.
• Sufficient experience managing a team and working within the data centre industry.
• Experience in the fundamental operations of critical mechanical and electrical infrastructure and technical knowledge in Data Centre operations and procedures
• Knowledge / experience of Power, Cooling & Facilities Engineering inside a Data Centre
• Knowledge / experience of physical - IT security
• Experience with capacity planning, preferably at a Data Centre level.
• Ability to travel globally.

Soft Skills:

• Customer and Business focused: Understands the importance of internal stakeholders and therefore works to build strong relationships and to maintain clear channels of communication.
• Customer centricity and natural drive to work with other areas of the business to provide the customer with the best possible outcome.
• Excellent management and leadership skills (experienced managing across multiple hierarchical layers)
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills
• Ability to prioritise appropriately in a fast-paced environment.
• Excellent problem solver
• Ability to take decisions under ambiguity balancing chance and risk.
• Has a can-do mentality and focuses on prevention and continuous improvement.
• Strategic thinker with strong tactical and analytical skills to deploy strategies.
• Openness to change incl. ability to design and facilitate organizational change.
• Stress-resilient, high energy, self-motivated and passionate for service excellence.
• Collaborating and influencing: Working in a matrix environment, able to engage people in a dialogue to gain commitment and bring them "on board", linking their perspective to the intent.
• Business fluent in local language and English

A bit about us

Digital Realty brings companies and data together by delivering the full spectrum of data center, colocation and interconnection solutions. PlatformDIGITAL®, the company's global data center platform, provides customers with a secure data meeting place and a proven Pervasive Datacenter Architecture (PDx™) solution methodology for powering innovation and efficiently managing Data Gravity challenges. Digital Realty gives its customers access to the connected data communities that matter to them with a global data center footprint of 300+ facilities in 50+ metros across 25+ countries on six continents. To learn more about Digital Realty, please visit digitalrealty.com or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.