We are looking for an experienced Operational Lead – Day-to-Day (D2D) Operations to oversee and manage the core IT infrastructure services, including VMware, Storage, Backup, DBaaS, and Monitoring. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in operational excellence, incident management, and proactive infrastructure support. This role demands a hands-on leader who can drive operational stability, optimize system performance, ensure service continuity, and lead a team of technical experts across multiple domains.
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Location
Saudi Arabia - Riyadh
Responsibilities
- Lead daily operations for VMware, enterprise storage, backup, database-as-a-service (DBaaS), and infrastructure monitoring platforms.
- Ensure SLA adherence and rapid resolution of incidents, problems, and service requests.
- Coordinate with cross-functional teams to address performance, capacity, and availability concerns.
- Oversee infrastructure health, stability, and monitoring using industry-standard tools.
- Drive incident root cause analysis and implement permanent fixes.
- Manage patching, upgrades, and lifecycle management of infrastructure components.
- Define and maintain operational procedures, runbooks, and SOPs.
- Collaborate with architects and service owners to ensure alignment with infrastructure standards.
- Maintain and report on KPIs, operational metrics, and service availability dashboards.
- Lead the shift operations and participate in on-call escalation rotations.
- Contribute to continuous improvement initiatives, automation, and process enhancements.
- Mentor and guide operational support engineers and junior administrators.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, or related field.
- 8+ years of IT infrastructure experience, including operational leadership roles.
- Strong hands-on expertise in VMware vSphere environments (ESXi, vCenter).
- Deep understanding of enterprise storage platforms (e.g., Pure Storage, Dell EMC, NetApp).
- Experience with backup technologies (e.g., Veeam, Commvault, Networker).
- Solid understanding of DBaaS operational models and support practices (e.g., Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL).
- Expertise in infrastructure monitoring solutions (e.g., Zabbix, SolarWinds, Nagios, Prometheus).
- Experience leading technical teams in high-availability and production environments.
- Strong troubleshooting and incident resolution capabilities.
- Familiarity with ITIL processes, especially incident, change, and problem management.
- Excellent documentation, coordination, and communication skills.
Additional skills (Nice to have)
- VMware certifications (VCP or higher).
- Backup & Storage certifications (Veeam, Dell, NetApp, Pure Storage, etc.).
- Familiarity with public cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, or GCP).
- Experience with automation tools (Ansible, PowerShell, Python).
- ITIL Foundation certification.
- Exposure to service management platforms (ServiceNow, Remedy).
- Familiarity with storage performance testing and analysis tools.
- Background in database storage optimization (Oracle, SQL Server, etc.).
- Experience with data governance and compliance requirements.
- Knowledge of data lifecycle management and information lifecycle management.
