The Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) develops and operates a high-performance computing and data Research Infrastructure (RI) that supports world-class sciences in Switzerland. Our internationally recognised team innovates in the HPC industry by designing and developing future systems, software and services, and operate a world-leading data centre infrastructure for extreme computing and data solutions. The quality of the services offered to our partners and users is a key metric for our success.

We are looking for an experienced Chief Operating Officer (COO) to oversee our organization’s ongoing operations and procedures. As member of the executive management, you will report directly to the director.

As COO you are responsible for the Centre to provide high-quality services. To reach this goal you will oversee services, ensure their availability and support, coordinate activities, establish processes, and control resources. In this way, you enable the management colleagues and the director to focus on the continued development of the RI.

You are an excellent organiser able to align the operation of the centre with the business and strategic goals. You can maintain an overview of all relevant aspects (such as infrastructure, services, resources, roadmaps, commitments, processes, and IT security) to ensure that all current and upcoming operational needs are properly factored in a service-oriented architecture.  You have experience in a working environment that goes through fast paces of change, specifically at an organization similar to CSCS that is at a leading edge of developing digitalized solutions for research.

You’ll have to maintain control of diverse business operations, so we expect you to be an experienced and efficient leader. If you also have excellent people skills, business acumen and exemplary work ethics, we’d like to meet you.

Your responsibilities will include, and not limited to

• Managing the end-to-end provisioning of the RI’s services together with a team of service managers.
• Monitoring and overseeing the data centre operations to ensure defined service level objectives are attained.
• Planning the data centre infrastructure, facility and resources needed for the provision of present and future services.
• Leading IT security compliance, monitoring and incident management activities according to defined regulatory frameworks.
• Coordinating business continuity and risk management to prevent and manage interruptions of services.
• Financial budget and expenditure controlling to guarantee effective delivery of services.

• Demonstrated experience in a senior leadership position within an organization with focus on delivering RI or similar services, in either the public or private sectors.
• Evidence of developing and attaining strategic objectives through strong planning, communication and management skills.
• Strong project leadership and management expertise and experience.
• Demonstrable experience of finance and budgetary responsibilities at a senior level; such experience in the public sector context will be considered a plus.
• Highly developed communication skills to establish credibility internally and externally in a complex environment with stakeholders at all levels of seniority.
• Ability to coordinate the development of robust plans to deliver on priorities and objectives of institutions similar to an RI to ensure medium- and long-term operational capabilities.
• Applied knowledge of delivery of high quality services in operations efficiently, for instance, using DevOps tools and methods.
• A thorough understanding of contemporary and complex software applications architectures at scale.

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