Operational Excellence Program Manager

About the Role
Join us as an Operational Excellence Program Manager, focusing on reducing stranded capacity and playing a crucial role in the deployment planning and optimization of IT capacity. You'll collaborate closely with Electrical Engineers and Critical Environment Field Service Engineers to support the company's Cloud Operations & Innovation (CO+I) team, which drives the core infrastructure for services like Azure, Office 365, and Xbox. Your initiatives will enhance Infrastructure Utilization Effectiveness (IUE) and Power Harvesting (PH), leading retrofitting efforts to improve legacy data centers and harvest capacity within our existing fleet. As part of this role, you will also benefit from ongoing training, growth opportunities, and a culture that promotes diversity and inclusion.

Responsibilities

• Strategy & Business Planning

  • Partner with the Regional Director and Leadership Team to translate priorities into actionable plans with clear milestones, ownership, and measurable outcomes.
  • Coordinate annual, quarterly, and long-range planning; track priorities requiring leadership intervention; and support business reviews, offsites, and strategic planning sessions.

• Operational Governance & Execution

  • Establish strong governance to track commitments, actions, risks, and dependencies.
  • Ensure leadership decisions are executed and promote consistent practices across countries and data centers while surfacing material risks relating to availability, safety, security, operational readiness, capacity, and compliance.

• Executive Communications

  • Assist the Regional Director with clear, consistent executive communications that translate complex operational information into concise presentations, briefings, and leadership updates.

• Stakeholder & Cross-Functional Alignment

  • Serve as a coordination point between the Regional Director, country leaders, and partner functions to build robust cross-functional relationships and facilitate shared ownership, ensuring operational priorities are represented in broader organizational discussions.

• Business Performance & Insights

  • Monitor regional KPIs, commitments, and strategic initiatives; consolidate performance data into concise executive insights that highlight trends, gaps, dependencies, and priorities to inform transparent, data-driven leadership decisions.

Qualifications
Required

• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field and industry experience
• Experience in senior-level program or portfolio governance roles within complex operational environments
• Strong governance, structure, and execution discipline with a proven ability to work with senior leadership and translate strategy into execution
• Experience operating as an individual contributor with executive-level exposure

Background Check Requirements:
Ability to meet the company's, customer, and/or government security screening requirements is essential for this role, including:

• Company Cloud Background Check: This position will require passing the company's Cloud background check upon hire/transfer and every two years thereafter.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• Experience working in a data center, critical infrastructure, technology operations, or similar environments
• Ability to understand technical dependencies and operational risks without being the technical decision owner.

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Equal Opportunity Employer
The company is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations, and ordinances. If you need assistance with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.