Global Server, Storage and Backup Manager

KBR · Leatherhead

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About the Role

The Global Server, Storage and Backup Manager is responsible for leading and developing a geographically distributed team delivering KBR’s enterprise compute, virtualisation, server operating system, storage, backup, infrastructure recovery and data centre operational services.

The role provides global operational leadership, service ownership and governance across KBR’s data centre estate. This includes infrastructure hosted within commercial colocation facilities, dedicated data centres, restricted operating environments and server rooms located within KBR offices and project locations.

The Global Server, Storage and Backup manager is accountable for service availability, performance, capacity, security, operational support, lifecycle management, backup compliance, restoration capability, data centre operations, IT disaster recovery failover planning and continuous improvement across the assigned technology portfolio.

The successful candidate will be an experienced infrastructure operations leader with strong technical knowledge and a demonstrated ability to manage global teams, complex production services, data centre environments, major incidents, suppliers, operational risk and senior stakeholder relationships.

This position reports to the Director, Networks and Infrastructure and works closely with Cybersecurity, Network Services, Workplace Technology, Service Management, Procurement, Facilities, Real Estate, Physical Security and relevant business stakeholders.

Key Responsibilities

Leadership and Service Ownership

• Lead, manage and develop a global team responsible for enterprise compute, virtualisation, server operating systems, storage, backup, infrastructure recovery and data centre operational services.
• Provide leadership and direction to regional managers, team leads and technical specialists across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and Asia Pacific.
• Establish clear service ownership, operational responsibilities, escalation paths and support coverage across regions and time zones.
• Define and maintain operational standards that support the availability, performance, security, capacity, resilience and recoverability of the assigned services.
• Maintain clear operational ownership and governance for KBR’s global data centre estate, including commercial colocation facilities and server rooms located within corporate offices, project locations and restricted operating environments.
• Set performance objectives, manage workload allocation and develop the technical, operational and leadership capabilities of the team.
• Maintain appropriate succession plans and reduce reliance on individual members of staff for critical technologies and services.
• Build a culture of accountability, operational discipline, customer service, collaboration, documentation and continuous improvement.
• Maintain effective management escalation arrangements for planned maintenance, major incidents and operational issues outside normal UK business hours.

Compute and Virtualisation Operations

• Provide operational leadership for physical and virtual compute platforms, including server hardware, hypervisors, management platforms and associated infrastructure services.
• Oversee the provisioning, configuration, monitoring, patching, upgrading, vulnerability remediation and retirement of Windows Server and Linux environments.
• Ensure server and virtualisation platforms are operated in accordance with approved technical standards, security requirements and support procedures.
• Maintain appropriate standards for server builds, hardware configurations, firmware, operating system versions, access controls and platform hardening.
• Maintain effective capacity planning and forecasting across physical compute, virtualisation platforms, server operating systems and supporting infrastructure.
• Monitor platform availability, utilisation, performance and resilience, identifying emerging risks and implementing corrective action before service is affected.
• Ensure unsupported, obsolete or non-compliant technologies are identified and remediated through agreed lifecycle plans.
• Contribute operational requirements, supportability considerations and lessons learned to infrastructure changes before implementation.

Storage Operations

• Provide operational leadership for enterprise block and file storage platforms and services.
• Oversee storage provisioning, replication, snapshots, encryption, capacity management, performance monitoring and lifecycle management.
• Maintain accurate forecasts for storage consumption, growth, performance and support requirements.
• Ensure storage platforms are configured and operated to provide appropriate resilience, availability, recoverability and data protection.
• Identify capacity constraints, performance issues, unsupported technologies and resilience risks and ensure timely corrective action.
• Maintain clear operational standards for storage allocation, access, replication, monitoring and support.
• Ensure storage services are appropriately documented and supported across all relevant regions and locations.

Backup and Recovery Operations

• Lead enterprise backup and recovery operations for infrastructure platforms and data within the defined service scope.
• Own the availability, operation and lifecycle management of enterprise backup platforms and associated supporting technologies.
• Ensure backup policies, schedules, retention requirements, encryption, immutability controls, monitoring and exception processes are properly implemented and maintained.
• Establish reporting and corrective action processes for backup failures, unprotected infrastructure, capacity constraints, unsuccessful restoration tests and unresolved data protection risks.
• Maintain the technical recovery readiness of compute, virtualisation, storage and backup platforms through documented procedures, replication monitoring, restoration testing and remediation of identified recovery risks.
• Coordinate and oversee regular backup restoration and infrastructure recovery testing.
• Ensure recovery tests are documented, results are retained and identified issues are assigned, tracked and remediated.
• Maintain appropriate recovery procedures, dependencies and escalation arrangements for critical infrastructure services.
• Report backup compliance, restoration performance, recovery readiness and unresolved risks to relevant technical and senior stakeholders.

IT Disaster Recovery and Failover Planning

• Own, maintain and govern KBR’s IT disaster recovery failover plans for the infrastructure services within the assigned portfolio.
• Ensure disaster recovery plans remain current, accurate, operationally viable and aligned with KBR’s approved recovery priorities, recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives.
• Maintain documented failover and failback procedures for critical compute, virtualisation, storage, backup and supporting data centre services.
• Ensure disaster recovery plans clearly define recovery sequencing, technical dependencies, decision points, roles and responsibilities, escalation routes, communication arrangements and authority to invoke a failover.
• Maintain an accurate inventory of infrastructure services covered by each disaster recovery plan, including their primary and recovery locations, replication arrangements, recovery dependencies and known constraints.
• Ensure disaster recovery plans reflect changes to infrastructure platforms, data centre locations, network connectivity, suppliers, support arrangements and operating models.
• Establish a formal review cycle for IT disaster recovery failover plans and ensure they are updated following material infrastructure changes, incidents, tests or organisational changes.
• Coordinate with Network Services, Cybersecurity, Service Management, Facilities, Physical Security and relevant business stakeholders to ensure that cross-service dependencies are understood and incorporated into recovery plans.
• Define and maintain invocation criteria for infrastructure failover, including the circumstances in which services should remain at the primary location, be recovered locally or be failed over to an alternative location.
• Ensure appropriate technical and management resources are identified for disaster recovery invocation, failover execution, service validation and subsequent failback.
• Establish and maintain disaster recovery contact lists, escalation paths, supplier contacts, colocation provider contacts and out of hours support arrangements.
• Plan and coordinate regular disaster recovery exercises, including technical walkthroughs, component recovery tests, partial failover exercises and full infrastructure failover tests where appropriate.
• Ensure disaster recovery exercises validate the practicality of documented procedures, the availability of required resources and the ability to recover services within agreed objectives.
• Ensure all disaster recovery tests and exercises have documented scope, objectives, success criteria, risks, approvals and communication plans.
• Record test results, recovery timings, issues, dependencies, deviations and lessons learned.
• Ensure identified disaster recovery deficiencies are assigned to accountable owners, prioritised according to operational risk and tracked through to completion.
• Report disaster recovery readiness, test performance, unresolved risks and required investment to technical and senior stakeholders.
• Ensure appropriate evidence of disaster recovery planning, testing and remediation is retained for audit, regulatory and contractual purposes.
• Lead the infrastructure response when an IT disaster recovery plan is invoked, coordinating technical recovery, stakeholder communication, supplier escalation and service restoration.
• Maintain governance over the return to normal operations following a failover, including service validation, risk assessment, failback planning, data synchronisation and formal closure.
• Conduct a structured review following any disaster recovery invocation or significant exercise and ensure resulting improvements are incorporated into plans, procedures and operational standards.
• Ensure KBR’s IT disaster recovery plans address the loss or unavailability of commercial colocation facilities, office server rooms, infrastructure platforms, power, cooling, physical access and critical site services.
• Identify infrastructure services that do not have an adequate recovery capability and develop risk treatment or remediation plans with the relevant stakeholders.
• Ensure disaster recovery plans remain accessible during a major incident, including where normal corporate systems or primary locations are unavailable.

Data Centre and Infrastructure Facilities Operations

• Provide global operational leadership for KBR’s data centre estate, including commercial colocation facilities, dedicated data centres, restricted environments and server rooms located within KBR offices and project locations.
• Maintain an accurate global inventory of data centre and server room locations, including the infrastructure hosted at each site, service criticality, support arrangements, physical dependencies, capacity, lifecycle status and recovery role.
• Establish and maintain operational standards for data centre and server room environments, including rack layouts, equipment installation, structured cabling, labelling, power allocation, environmental monitoring, physical access and operational documentation.
• Ensure new infrastructure is installed in accordance with approved rack, power, cooling, cabling, resilience, security and support standards.
• Maintain effective capacity planning for rack space, electrical power, cooling, network connectivity, physical cabling and supporting infrastructure across the global estate.
• Identify capacity constraints, single points of failure, environmental risks, unsupported facilities and other conditions that could affect infrastructure availability or resilience.
• Work with Facilities, Real Estate, Physical Security and colocation providers to ensure data centre and server room environments provide appropriate power, cooling, fire detection, fire suppression, environmental monitoring, physical security and resilience.
• Ensure responsibilities between Information Technology, Facilities, Real Estate, Physical Security and colocation providers are clearly documented and understood for each location.
• Maintain oversight of power and cooling dependencies, including uninterruptible power supplies, power distribution units, generators, environmental sensors and related alarm and escalation arrangements.
• Ensure environmental alarms and infrastructure facility alerts are actionable, appropriately prioritised and integrated with KBR’s incident and escalation processes.
• Maintain appropriate physical access controls for data centre and server room environments, including access approval, periodic access reviews, visitor management, audit records and the removal of access when no longer required.
• Ensure access to restricted or classified infrastructure environments is managed in accordance with applicable security, contractual, nationality, residency and clearance requirements.
• Establish appropriate local support, remote hands and emergency access arrangements for each data centre and server room location.
• Manage operational relationships with colocation providers, local Facilities teams, installation partners, cabling providers, logistics suppliers and remote hands services.
• Hold colocation and facilities service providers accountable for availability, incident response, access, maintenance notification, environmental conditions, service restoration and contractual performance.
• Review planned building, electrical, cooling, fire system and facilities maintenance activities for potential impact on infrastructure services.
• Ensure infrastructure teams receive appropriate notice of planned facilities work and that risks, contingency arrangements, communications and escalation paths are understood before work proceeds.
• Lead or coordinate the infrastructure response to data centre incidents, including loss of power, cooling failure, environmental alarms, water ingress, physical security events, connectivity failures and restricted site access.
• Ensure significant data centre and facilities incidents receive root cause analysis, corrective actions, assigned ownership and management follow through.
• Maintain current site documentation, including floor plans, rack elevations, power allocations, cabling records, access procedures, support contacts, escalation paths, shutdown procedures and recovery arrangements.
• Ensure equipment deliveries, installations, relocations and removals are properly planned, authorised, recorded and completed in accordance with site requirements.
• Maintain effective controls for the receipt, storage, movement, installation and disposal of infrastructure equipment within data centre and server room locations.
• Ensure data-bearing equipment is handled, transported, sanitised and disposed of in accordance with KBR security and information handling requirements.
• Assess the suitability and supportability of office server rooms, identifying locations where power, cooling, physical security, environmental monitoring, resilience or support arrangements do not meet operational requirements.
• Develop and manage remediation plans for server rooms or data centre locations that present unacceptable operational, security, resilience or lifecycle risk.
• Identify opportunities to consolidate infrastructure, retire unsuitable server rooms, reduce duplicated facilities, improve resilience and lower the total cost of operating the global data centre estate.
• Provide operational leadership for data centre openings, closures, migrations, expansions, consolidations and relocations.
• Ensure operational teams are involved during the planning of new offices, major refurbishments and project locations where server room or infrastructure facilities will be required.
• Define and enforce operational acceptance criteria for new or materially changed data centre and server room environments before production infrastructure is installed or transitioned into support.
• Ensure operational acceptance includes appropriate power, cooling, connectivity, monitoring, security, support coverage, documentation, access, spares and escalation arrangements.
• Maintain visibility of colocation contracts, facility support agreements, remote hands arrangements, maintenance services and key renewal dates in partnership with Procurement and Commercial teams.
• Support budget planning and forecasting for colocation charges, power consumption, remote hands services, cabling, infrastructure installations, facilities remediation and data centre lifecycle activity.
• Review colocation and server room expenditure to identify unused space, stranded power, unnecessary services, billing errors and opportunities for consolidation or contract optimisation.
• Provide regular reporting on data centre capacity, resilience, environmental risk, facilities incidents, lifecycle concerns, compliance issues and required investment.

Service Assurance and Operational Management

• Establish and maintain operational acceptance criteria for new and materially changed infrastructure services before they transition into production support.
• Ensure infrastructure monitoring, telemetry and alerting are effective, actionable, appropriately prioritised and integrated with KBR’s incident management processes.
• Lead or support the response to major compute, virtualisation, storage, backup and data centre incidents, including technical recovery, stakeholder communication, escalation and service restoration.
• Ensure significant and recurring incidents receive meaningful root cause analysis, documented corrective actions, assigned ownership and management follow through.
• Identify systemic issues affecting platform stability, performance, resilience, recoverability or user experience and drive permanent corrective action.
• Ensure operational work is managed through KBR’s approved Information Technology Service Management processes, including incident, request, problem, change, asset, configuration and knowledge management.
• Review significant infrastructure changes for technical risk, business impact, testing readiness, implementation planning, communication, validation and rollback capability.
• Ensure scheduled maintenance, patching and upgrade activities are properly planned, communicated, controlled and completed.
• Maintain effective operational engagement with regional support teams and other infrastructure service owners.

Security, Risk and Compliance

• Partner with Cybersecurity to remediate vulnerabilities, unsupported technologies, insecure configurations, privileged access risks, certificate issues and identified control deficiencies.
• Ensure supported infrastructure platforms comply with applicable security, licensing, audit, information classification, contractual and organisational requirements.
• Own and maintain the operational controls assigned to server, virtualisation, storage, backup, recovery and data centre services.
• Support internal and external audit activity through the timely provision of accurate evidence, management responses and remediation plans.
• Support annual SOX control certification activities where controls are assigned to the team.
• Ensure identified control deficiencies are documented, assigned and remediated within agreed timescales.
• Maintain appropriate separation of duties and privileged access controls across the supported technology portfolio.
• Ensure infrastructure risks are recorded, assessed, communicated and managed through the appropriate KBR governance processes.

Documentation, Asset and Lifecycle Management

• Maintain accurate operational documentation, including service records, infrastructure inventories, configuration information, support models, runbooks, recovery procedures, data centre records and knowledge articles.
• Maintain visibility of hardware, software, licences, warranties, maintenance agreements and support lifecycle dates.
• Develop and execute remediation plans before technologies become unsupported or present unacceptable operational, security or financial risk.
• Ensure infrastructure asset and configuration records are complete, accurate and maintained within approved systems.
• Maintain current technical and operational documentation for all critical services.
• Ensure support procedures, recovery documentation and site-specific operating instructions are accessible to the relevant teams and tested periodically.

Supplier and Commercial Management

• Manage relationships with infrastructure manufacturers, software providers, support partners, colocation providers, managed service providers, remote hands services and implementation suppliers.
• Hold suppliers accountable for service performance, support quality, escalation response, delivery timescales, contractual commitments and corrective actions.
• Manage technical escalations with suppliers and ensure unresolved issues receive appropriate senior attention.
• Review colocation service performance, incident records, planned maintenance, remote hands delivery, power consumption, capacity and contractual compliance.
• Support the commercial management of colocation space, power, cross-connects, remote hands, cabling services and associated facility charges.
• Support operating budgets, capital planning, forecasts, renewals, licensing decisions, infrastructure investments and cost optimisation initiatives.
• Review support agreements, licences, maintenance arrangements and colocation services to identify duplication, unnecessary expenditure and consolidation opportunities.
• Maintain accurate forecasts for infrastructure renewals, capacity requirements, data centre needs and lifecycle replacement activity.
• Identify opportunities to automate routine work, standardise operational processes, consolidate technologies, reduce technical debt, improve resilience and lower total operating cost.

Infrastructure Change, Data Centre Activity and Service Transition

• Provide operational leadership for infrastructure migrations, upgrades, data centre openings and closures, office relocations, acquisitions, divestitures, enterprise separations and technology transformation programmes.
• Lead the operational planning and execution of infrastructure moves between commercial colocation facilities, office server rooms and other supported locations.
• Ensure moves and migrations include appropriate planning for equipment dependencies, rack space, power, cooling, network connectivity, cabling, physical access, logistics, monitoring and support coverage.
• Ensure operational teams are engaged early enough to assess service readiness, supportability, resilience, security, monitoring, documentation, facilities dependencies and resource requirements.
• Ensure new and changed services and locations are fully documented and meet operational acceptance requirements before entering production support.
• Manage the operational transition of infrastructure services, including knowledge transfer, support arrangements, monitoring, escalation procedures, supplier engagement and site-specific operating procedures.
• Communicate service performance, data centre risks, capacity constraints, facilities dependencies, lifecycle issues, recovery readiness and investment requirements to technical and executive stakeholders.

Essential Qualifications and Experience

Education and Professional Experience

• A degree, higher technical qualification, recognised apprenticeship or equivalent professional experience in information technology, computer science, engineering or a related discipline.
• Substantial progressive experience supporting enterprise compute, virtualisation, storage, backup, data centre or related infrastructure services.
• Significant experience leading geographically distributed infrastructure operations teams, including line management of managers, team leads or senior technical specialists.
• Experience supporting enterprise infrastructure across multiple locations, countries, regions or time zones.
• Experience managing production infrastructure within a large, complex, multinational or regulated organisation.

Compute and Virtualisation Technology

• Strong knowledge of enterprise compute, virtualisation and server operating system technologies.
• Experience with enterprise compute platforms such as Cisco Unified Computing System or comparable technologies.
• Experience operating VMware or comparable enterprise virtualisation platforms.
• Experience supporting Microsoft Windows Server and Linux operating systems.
• Experience managing server provisioning, configuration, patching, firmware, upgrades, lifecycle management and vulnerability remediation.
• Experience with infrastructure monitoring, configuration management, orchestration and automation technologies.

Storage and Data Protection Technology

• Strong knowledge of enterprise storage, backup, restoration and infrastructure recovery technologies.
• Experience with enterprise storage technologies such as NetApp, Pure Storage or comparable platforms.
• Experience with enterprise backup and recovery technologies such as Rubrik or comparable platforms.
• Experience managing block and file storage, replication, snapshots, encryption, capacity and performance.
• Experience managing backup policies, schedules, retention, encryption, immutability, monitoring and restoration testing.
• Experience assessing infrastructure recovery readiness and remediating identified recovery risks.

Data Centre Operations

• Strong operational knowledge of enterprise data centres, commercial colocation facilities and server rooms located within corporate offices or project locations.
• Experience managing infrastructure across multiple data centre and server room locations, including geographically dispersed and restricted operating environments.
• Experience with data centre capacity planning, rack layouts, structured cabling, power allocation, cooling, environmental monitoring and physical access controls.
• Experience managing operational relationships with colocation providers, Facilities teams, Real Estate, Physical Security, remote hands providers and infrastructure installation partners.
• Experience responding to data centre incidents involving power, cooling, environmental conditions, physical access or facilities failures.
• Experience planning and delivering data centre openings, closures, migrations, consolidations, expansions or office infrastructure relocations.
• An understanding of the division of responsibilities between Information Technology teams, colocation providers, building Facilities, Real Estate and Physical Security.
• Experience establishing operational acceptance criteria for new data centre spaces, server rooms and material changes to existing infrastructure facilities.

Disaster Recovery

• Experience developing, maintaining and governing IT disaster recovery failover and failback plans for enterprise infrastructure services.
• Experience planning and leading disaster recovery exercises across multiple infrastructure teams, locations, suppliers and service providers.
• Experience assessing infrastructure dependencies, recovery sequencing, invocation criteria and operational recovery risks.
• Experience reporting disaster recovery readiness, test outcomes and unresolved risks to senior stakeholders.

Operational Leadership

• Experience managing service availability, monitoring, capacity, performance, patching, vulnerability remediation, lifecycle risk, backup compliance and recovery readiness.
• Experience leading major incidents and coordinating recovery activities across multiple technical teams and service providers.
• Working knowledge of ITIL practices and enterprise Information Technology Service Management processes.
• Experience using ServiceNow or a comparable service management platform.
• Experience managing infrastructure suppliers, support agreements, technical escalations, licences and service performance.
• Experience supporting data centre migrations, infrastructure upgrades, acquisitions, divestitures, enterprise separations or major technology change programmes.

Leadership and Core Competencies

• Demonstrated ability to lead, coach, develop and hold accountable a geographically distributed technical team.
• Strong operational judgement and the ability to balance service availability, security, cost, technical debt and business requirements.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, including the ability to identify systemic issues and drive permanent corrective action.
• Effective written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical risks, service impacts and required decisions to senior leaders.
• Strong organisational skills and the ability to manage competing priorities within a global production environment.
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate and influence across technical teams, business stakeholders, suppliers and senior leaders.
• Willingness to participate in an agreed management escalation arrangement and to support occasional planned maintenance or major incident activity outside normal UK business hours.
• Ability to travel within the United Kingdom and internationally when required.

Preferred Qualifications and Experience

• Experience supporting a multinational engineering, government services, aerospace, defence or highly regulated organisation.
• Experience supporting commercial, government, classified or otherwise restricted infrastructure environments.
• Experience with Cisco Unified Computing System, VMware, Microsoft Windows Server, Linux, NetApp, Pure Storage, Rubrik or comparable technologies.
• Experience operating infrastructure within Equinix or comparable commercial colocation facilities.
• Experience supporting infrastructure within both purpose-built data centres and server rooms located within office environments.
• Familiarity with data centre resilience principles, including redundant power, cooling, network connectivity, environmental monitoring and physical security.
• Experience managing colocation capacity, power consumption, remote hands services, cross-connects and related operating expenditure.
• Familiarity with applicable data centre standards or good practice, such as the Uptime Institute tier methodology, EN 50600 or comparable frameworks.
• Experience managing disaster recovery arrangements across commercial colocation facilities, dedicated data centres and office-based server rooms. Experience leading an actual infrastructure disaster recovery invocation or significant data centre failover event.
• Experience with infrastructure automation, configuration management, orchestration, monitoring and observability technologies.
• Experience supporting data centre migrations, acquisitions, divestitures, enterprise separations or large infrastructure transformation programmes.
• Familiarity with applicable control frameworks and guidance, including ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 20000-1, ISO 22301, NIST, CMMC, UK National Cyber Security Centre guidance, Cyber Essentials Plus and other government or contractual security requirements.
• Experience supporting SOX controls, internal audits, external audits and control remediation activities.
• Relevant professional certifications from Cisco, Microsoft, VMware, NetApp, Pure Storage, Rubrik, ITIL or comparable technology and service management organisations.

Location

United Kingdom, based at the company’s Leatherhead Campus, with hybrid working in accordance with KBR’s applicable policy.

The role supports global services across multiple regions and time zones.

Regular UK travel and occasional international travel will be required.

The successful candidate must have the right to work in the United Kingdom and may be required to obtain and maintain an appropriate level of security clearance.

KBR Company Information

When you become part of the KBR team, your opportunities are endless. Through collaboration with our customers, we’re defining tomorrow’s challenges, then providing the solutions and services to overcome those challenges, always maintaining our commitment to total safety and reliability.

At KBR, we partner with government and industry clients to provide purposeful and comprehensive solutions with an emphasis on efficiency and safety. With a full portfolio of services, proprietary technologies and expertise, our employees are ready to handle projects and missions throughout their entire lifecycle, from planning and design to sustainability and maintenance. Whether at the bottom of the ocean or in outer space, our clients trust us to deliver the impossible on a daily basis.

Working at KBR means being rewarded for your contributions. In addition to competitive benefits and professional development, our people are empowered to use all their potential, creating meaningful change for themselves and our clients. We attract the best minds in the world because our expertise thrives on creativity, resourcefulness and collaboration. That is how we supply our clients with cutting-edge solutions and services.
 

As the needs of the world change, we’re ready to respond and guide the way forward with strategic, sustainable, and technological advancements grounded in more than a century of practical application and execution.

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