Data Centre Project Manager

Data Centre Project Manager

Plenty of PMs say they've "done a data centre migration." Usually that means they were in the room while someone else moved the servers.

This role needs the person who was holding the cutover runbook at 2am.

The short version

A large, highly regulated Australian organisation is consolidating its data centres and needs a seasoned Senior Project Manager to own the program from start to finish. You'll run the whole thing: discovery, design, build, migration waves, cutover and decommissioning, through to handing a stable estate back to operations.

It's a day rate contract, ideally Sydney based on a hybrid basis.

What you'd actually be doing

• Working out what's really running before anyone commits to dates, then turning that into a credible plan
• Owning the integrated schedule, budget, resourcing, dependencies, RAID and change control
• Sequencing migration waves across servers, storage, network, applications, cloud and DR
• Planning high-risk cutovers properly, with rehearsals, contingency and a rollback point everyone has agreed in advance
• Holding vendors and integrators to what they signed up for, including deliverables, acceptance and commercial outcomes
• Keeping executives and steering committees informed with decisions, not just status colours
• Making sure operations are ready, trained and supported before you hand over the keys

What you'll need

• 10 to 15 years delivering complex infrastructure programs
• At least one major data centre consolidation, relocation or migration that you led, not just contributed to
• Real experience coordinating multi-vendor delivery and system integrators
• Strong commercial, financial and risk discipline
• The ability to explain a difficult trade-off to a senior executive in plain English
• PMP, PRINCE2 Practitioner or similar

Why bother

This is a full-lifecycle consolidation with real executive backing and a real deadline. Minimal disruption to the business is the success measure, so it suits someone who takes service continuity personally and enjoys the satisfaction of switching off the last rack.

If that sounds like your kind of program, send me a message or your CV.