Cluster Technical Manager

About VIRTUS

VIRTUS Data Centres is the UK's fastest growing data centre provider which owns, designs, builds and operates the country's most efficient and flexible data centres.

Our mission - consistently exceed the expectations of customers through innovative, high quality solutions and services. We employ intelligent thinkers – people with positive attitudes, who add to the quality of our customer proposition and business.

We value individual endeavour and initiative, encourage teamwork and togetherness because collective experience and expertise is VIRTUS' greatest strength.

About the Role

As a
Cluster Technical Manager
, you will act as the senior technical authority within your designated site cluster, supporting the delivery of operational excellence and technical operational leadership. You will mentor technical teams, ensure consistency and standardisation in critical operations, and drive risk mitigation across all operational activities in the data centre environment.

Key Responsibilities

The role includes but is not limited to the following: -

Health and Safety Leadership

·       Champion a culture of safety across all sites ensuring compliance with Health and Safety legislation and Approved Codes of Practice (ACOP).

Technical Leadership & Expertise

·       Manage and support site-level technical teams, ensuring consistent delivery of engineering services, maintenance and infrastructure reliability.

·       Apply deep technical expertise in Electrical and Mechanical systems in a live critical environment including capacity management.

·       Customer focused addressing customer queries and lead customer or investor technical audits.

·       Lead site teams when resolving complex issues and safe delivery of high-risk activities (e.g., DNO outages, customer deployments and lifecycle replacements/capacity upgrades).

·       Represent VIRTUS in technical meetings including Commissioning, Factory Acceptance Testing and Root Cause Analysis.

·       Identify and implement initiatives to reduce energy consumption and operational costs. Monitoring performance metrics and driving continuous improvement.

·       Review and approve procedures, driving quality and consistency across clusters and wider business.

Operational Excellence

·       Champion a zero-downtime culture by leading on risk mitigation and resilience planning.

·       Collaborate with DCO team to plan and execute high-risk works.

·       Provide oversight and technical signoff for high risk preventative maintenance and incident resolution.

·       Demonstrate all the VIRTUS values: Operational Excellence, Helpfulness, Care, Reliability, Dedication and Pride.

·       Evaluate 3rd-party vendors for competency and performance.

·       Ensure safe, high-quality delivery of third-party work through consistent monitoring and feedback.

·       Support technical reviews of RAMS and vendor reports.

Process Governance & Compliance

·       Ensure site procedures align with VIRTUS best practices, operational standards and regulatory compliance (e.g., ISO standards, Health & Safety).

·       Support GDPR and quality control standards by maintaining documentation accuracy across the cluster.

·       Promote standardisation of technical processes across all sites in the cluster.

Team Mentorship & Collaboration

·       Inspire, develop, lead and mentor Technical Managers (TMs) and Technical Shift Managers (TSMs).

·       Foster a collaborative and knowledge-sharing environment.

·       Support cluster-wide communication alignment with business goals and initiatives.

·       Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to align technical strategies with business goals.

Incident Management & Business Continuity

·       Act as technical lead during site incidents, providing accurate real-time updates and post-incident analysis.

·       Drive root cause investigations, incident reviews and resolution tracking.

·       Collaborate with site teams for business continuity planning and execution.

Project & Change Management

·       Provide input and technical oversight for Capex projects, customer installations and site upgrades.

·       Lead and co-ordinate technical activities across the cluster, from planning through execution, ensuring targets are met in line with budget and scope.

·       Drive delivery of technical activity key milestones while ensuring 100% uptime and customer SLA compliance.

·       Ensure timely updates to maintenance and project planning tools.

Key Traits & Competencies

·       Strong focus on Health & Safety.

·       Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.

·       Proven Leadership and team development skills.

·       Excellent Project Management capabilities.

·       Strategic mindset with a drive for Energy and Cost Efficiency.

·       Highly Results-Oriented with a bias for action.

·       Effective communicator and collaborator.

Qualifications & Experience

·       Electrical or Mechanical qualification preferably to Degree level.

·       Minimum 5 years of experience in technical operations or engineering leadership role.

·       Experience managing multi-site operations is highly desirable.

·       Certifications in Health & Safety (e.g., NEBOSH) preferred.

·       Project Management certification (e.g., PMP, PRINCE2) is a plus.

·       Membership of professional body e.g. IEE, IET, The Institute of Mechanical Engineers, CIBSE preferred.