Data Centre Lead

About Organization:

Larsen & Toubro Ltd, commonly known as L&T, is an Indian multinational conglomerate company, with business interests in engineering, construction, manufacturing, technology, information technology and financial services, headquartered in Mumbai. The company is counted among world's top five construction companies.

The L&T Group comprises of 93 subsidiaries, 5 associate companies, 27 joint ventures and 35 jointly held operations, operating across basic and heavy engineering, construction, realty, manufacturing of capital goods, information technology, and financial services.

Job Location: Manappakam, Chennai

Working Model: Work from office

Operating Model: 6 days (2nd and 4th Saturdays Off)

Educational Qualifications: B.Tech/B.E (preferably in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related fields)

Experience: 6-10 years in in Enterprise Datacentre Operations

1. Overview

The Infrastructure Lead Data Centre, oversees the day-to-day operations, maintenance, strategy, and continuous improvement of critical data centre environments. Ensure maximum system availability, resilience, efficiency, and security across physical and virtual data centre assets. The ideal candidate blends technical expertise in core infrastructure with strong vendor management, team leadership, and strategic planning skills.

2. Key Responsibilities:

Direct and oversee day-to-day operations of data centre facilities, ensuring strict adherence to SLAs, uptime targets (99.99%+), and safety standards.

Capacity & Environmental Planning: Lead power, cooling, space, and rack management planning to ensure efficient infrastructure scaling and high energy efficiency (PUE optimization).

Hardware & Systems Management: Oversee the deployment, lifecycle management, and retirement of servers, SAN/NAS storage systems, hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), and physical networking hardware.

Incident & Problem Management: Serve as the primary technical escalation point for critical infrastructure outages, leading root cause analysis (RCA) and driving post-incident remediation.

Vendor & Service Management: Manage relationships, service level agreements (SLAs), and contracts with co-location providers, hardware vendors, and maintenance technicians.

Disaster Recovery & Security: Lead disaster recovery (DR) strategy execution, regular failover testing, physical security controls, and compliance audits (ISO 27001, CSAF, ITGC etc.).

Team Leadership: Mentor and guide a team of data centre engineers and technicians, managing shift rosters, skill development.

3. Desired Candidate Profile:

Educational Qualifications

Bachelors degree in engineering (preferably in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related fields).

Professional Experience

Minimum 6+ years in data centre engineering or enterprise IT infrastructure operations, with at least 23 years in a team lead or technical manager capacity.

Technical Skills

Systems & Storage

• Expertise in enterprise hardware (Dell EMC, HPE, Cisco UCS).
• Proficiency in virtualization platforms (e.g., VMware vSphere/ESXi, Nutanix).
• Experience with enterprise storage systems (SAN, NAS).

Facility Knowledge

• Solid understanding of data centre physical facilities, including HVAC, UPS systems, diesel generators, fire suppression, and power distribution units (PDUs).

Networking Core

• Knowledge of data centre networking concepts, including Spine-Leaf architecture, BGP, VLANs, and fibre optic cabling standards.

Certifications (Preferred)

• Certified Data Centre Professional (CDCP) or Certified Data Centre Expert (CDCE).
• VMware Certified Professional (VCP).
• Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) or Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP).
• ITIL Foundation v3/v4.

Soft Skills

• Strong crisis management and analytical problem-solving skills under pressure.
• Clear communication skills for reporting operational status to executive leadership.
• Ability to mentor and guide teams in a dynamic environment.

4. Key Deliverables

• Ensure 99.99%+ uptime for critical data centre infrastructure.
• Successfully execute disaster recovery (DR) strategies and conduct regular failover testing.
• Optimize power usage effectiveness (PUE) and ensure high energy efficiency.
• Maintain compliance ISO 27001, ITGC etc.
• Lead root cause analysis (RCA) for critical incidents and implement post-incident remediation plans.
• Manage vendor relationships and ensure adherence to SLAs and contractual obligations.
• Drive team performance through effective leadership, training, and development.