Operational Excellence Program Manager
Operations
Madrid, Spain
EUR 52,800-89,200 / year
This role ensures consistent execution, transparency, and accountability across a growing and increasingly complex portfolio of operational and CAPEX programs. It does not own day‑to‑day site execution, but owns governance, execution quality, and leadership visibility across sites and programmes.
This role sits at the intersection of Datacenter Operations strategy and execution, providing leadership with a single source of truth across regional initiatives, risks, and operational priorities. The successful candidate will influence executive decision-making, improve execution consistency across the region, and help shape the future operating model of Datacenter Operations as Microsoft's cloud infrastructure continues to scale
Responsibilities
Portfolio Governance & Oversight
Own the regional governance framework for Datacenter Operations initiatives across Operations, IT, CE, Build, and Lease functions.
Establish and enforce standardized approaches for:
- Initiative intake and prioritization
- Scope definition and success criteria
- Decision rights and escalation paths
- Governance cadence and artefacts
- Eliminate fragmented or overlapping ownership and ensure governance scales with portfolio growth and regulatory complexity.
Execution & Initiative Oversight
Maintain a consolidated, portfolio‑level view of all regional initiatives sponsored by Datacenter Operations leadership.
Ensure every initiative has:
- A clear accountable owner and RACI
- Defined scope, milestones, and timelines
- Transparent, consistent status reporting
- Proactively identify execution risks, delivery gaps, and misalignment; escalate early with options and recommendations.
Risk Management & Transparency
Maintain an integrated view of operational, compliance, and regulatory risks across the regional portfolio.
Ensure risks are:
- Captured early by working with internal and external teams that impact Operations
- Assessed consistently
- Actively mitigated with accountable owners
- Provide leadership with clear, data‑driven visibility on risk posture, trends, and residual exposure.
- Cross‑Campus & Cross‑Program Alignment
- Drive alignment across campuses and programs to ensure consistent interpretation and execution of standards and policies.
Act as the integrator between:
- Campus Directors
- Site Operations Managers
- IT Operations and Critical Environment leadership
- Build & Lease programs
- Regional and global assurance, risk, and compliance functions
- Prevent site‑specific deviations from becoming systemic or portfolio‑level risks.
Executive Reporting & Governance Cadence
Build and maintain executive‑ready dashboards covering:
- Initiative and portfolio health
- Risks, blockers, and dependencies
- Decision points requiring leadership input
- Prepare monthly and quarterly updates for leadership forums (e.g. MBRs, QBRs).
- Ensure leadership decisions are driven by facts and data rather than anecdotal escalation.
Continuous Improvement & Governance Maturity
- Use delivery, audit, and compliance insights to identify recurring execution or governance issues.
- Drive structural improvements rather than repeated local corrective actions.
- Improve predictability of outcomes through standardized tooling, reporting, and governance rhythms. Oversight of Critical & High‑Impact Programs
Maintain a single, authoritative view of critical Datacenter Operations programs, including:
- Large‑scale CAPEX initiatives and infrastructure deployments
- GPU and AI platform programs
- New datacenter builds and campus expansions
- High‑risk operational transitions and readiness activities (RFO/RFS)
- Ensure leadership receives early warning signals on delivery and risk.
Workforce Planning & Growth Support
Provide structured inputs to Datacenter Operations leadership for workforce and capacity planning.
Support analysis of:
- Headcount growth aligned to new datacenters and capacity expansion
- Capacity versus demand across IT Operations and CE
- Capability gaps and timing risks
- Drive discussions on Organisational Design to enable evolving needs of the organisation leveraging design principles for the region
- Contribute to Workforce Strategy Planning (WSP) and annual planning cycles.
Qualifications
Required
- Diploma in a relevant field AND industry experience OR
- 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.
- Proven ability to influence across organizations through delegated sponsorship from the DC Ops Director and standing authority in a named governance forum
- Experience operating as an individual contributor with executive‑level exposure.
- Strong written and verbal communication and executive synthesis skills.
Behavioural Attributes
- High ownership and bias for action
- Comfortable constructively challenging peers and leaders
- Calm, structured, and credible in ambiguity
- Trusted advisor to senior leadership
- Strategic thinking
- Influencing without authority
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Driving clarity through ambiguity
- Customer and business impact
- Inclusion and partnership
Key Stakeholders
- DC Operations Director (direct reporting line)
- Regional IT Operations leadership
- Critical Environment (CE) leadership
- Central PMO / Biz Ops teams (as applicable)
- Program and initiative owners across the region
Required Skills & Experience
Core Capabilities
- Strong Program Management / PMO experience (multi‑initiative, multi‑stakeholder).
- Proven ability to operate as an individual contributor with executive exposure.
- Excellent governance, structure, and execution discipline.
- Strong communication and executive synthesis skills.
- Experience translating operational data (KPIs / OKRs) into leadership insights.
- Understanding of Datacenter Operations, IT Operations, and Critical Environment domains (technical depth not required, dependency awareness essential).
- Experience leading portfolio governance across multiple concurrent programs with significant operational, infrastructure, or capital investment scope.
- Preferred experience with PM, portfolio management, operational excellence, business operations, governance, risk management, or organizational effectiveness frameworks.
Background Check 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.
Additional or preferred qualifications
- Experience in Datacenter Operations, IT Operations, Critical Environment, or similar infrastructure environments.
- Ability to understand technical dependencies and operational risks without being the technical decision owner.
Data Center Operations Management IC4 - The typical base pay range for this role across Spain is € 52,800.00 - € 89,200.00 per year. Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation.
Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/corporate-pay/spain-corporate-pay.html
This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.
Microsoft 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.