Manager of Datacenter and Telecommunication Infrastructure-(230000K0)
Job Summary
Towson University (TU) is one of the nation’s top 100 public universities. Located north of Baltimore, TU currently enrolls more than 19,000 students and is the second-largest university in the prestigious University System of Maryland. Towson University values diversity and fosters a climate that is grounded in respect and inclusion to cultivate the intellectual and personal growth of the entire university community.
The Manager of Datacenter and Telecommunications Infrastructure oversees all aspects of the University’s datacenters and hub rooms. This includes overseeing the staff handling maintenance, operations, and environmental monitoring of the spaces. The Manager of Datacenter and Telecommunications Infrastructure also develops and oversees a preventative maintenance plan for the spaces, coordinates with our Facilities Management team to ensure preventative maintenance is carried out on our UPS and HVAC systems, coordinates with our Public Safety team for preventative maintenance of our fire detection and suppression systems, develops and maintains an effective environmental monitoring system, establishes standards for the datacenters and hub rooms, maintain service contracts for our UPS, HVAC, select server and storage platforms, and works with our Public Safety department to manage access to the datacenters and hub rooms.
The Manager of Datacenter and Telecommunications Infrastructure is also responsible for overseeing the Telecommunications Infrastructure team, which consists of a Telecommunications Supervisor and two Telecommunications Specialists, and is responsible for the maintenance and repair of our cabling infrastructure. This includes ensuring the team has the resources they need to carry out their work, heading up the development of bid packages for larger jobs, and regularly prioritizing work based on the needs of our dynamically changing environment.
The Manager of Datacenter and Telecommunications Infrastructure is also responsible for overseeing the EIS asset management program and the Datacenter and Asset Management Specialist, which tracks assets such as servers, storage, and network equipment from the time they are received through the time of disposal. The program includes ensuring the proper methods of disposal are carried out, coordinating with the University’s Property Records department during audits, and coordinating with the University’s Materials Management department for receiving and disposal.
The Manager of Datacenter and Telecommunications Infrastructure is responsible for effective monitoring of the telecommunications spaces, quickly detecting emergency conditions such as overheating, high humidity, flooding, smoke, etc., and efficiently organizing a quick and effective response with all stakeholders, including but not limited to the Office of Technology Services, Facilities Management, and Public Safety.
The Manager of Datacenter and Telecommunications Infrastructure is also regularly engaged with EIS leadership and participates in long-term planning. This includes assessing areas of risk and developing proposals to mitigate them; developing short and long term datacenter, hub room, and telecommunication budget projections; assessing the impact of projects and strategic decision on our environment on our electrical systems, HVAC systems, budget, etc.; planning for the introduction of new services into our environment; and planning for the shift of services to/from the cloud.
Responsibilities and Duties
Personnel Management
Management of the Datacenter and Telecommunications Infrastructure team.
Assessing future directions and gaps in knowledge that need to be filled.
Developing and maintaining professional development plans.
Ensuring there is coverage for operations and emergency responses.
Participating as a member of the Infrastructure and Planning and Enterprise and Infrastructure Leadership teams
Maintenance and Operations
Overseeing the Asset Management program.
Overseeing the installation of data cable within and between the datacenters and end stations.
Developing and overseeing a preventative maintenance plan.
Developing and overseeing an environmental monitoring plan.
Developing and maintaining standards for the datacenter and hub room spaces and ensuring compliance with them.
Overseeing the installation of cabling within and between the datacenters, hub rooms, and end stations.
Overseeing and maintaining access controls for the datacenter and hub rooms.
Working with the Facilities Management team to maintain the UPS and HVAC systems for datacenters and hub rooms.
Overseeing assigned campus network operations
Overseeing student network connectivity support in the residence halls.
Establishing and maintaining maintenance for UPS, environmental monitoring, and other datacenter related hardware.
Assisting with establishing and maintaining compute, storage, and network maintenance.
Environmental Monitoring & Emergency Response
Designing and maintaining a system for monitoring critical environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, particulate, and water sensors.
Continually monitoring environmental conditions.
Performing trend analysis on environmental measurements over time and identifying upcoming problems.
Working with stakeholders to develop and maintain an emergency response and communication plan.
Identifying environmental conditions that require immediate alerting and/or reporting to identify failures before they become service impacting.
Responding to emergencies and coordinating the response, including physical onsite coordination and investigation, and coordinating the response with Enterprise and Infrastructure Services, Facilities Management, the. TU Police Department, and others involved with triage, repair, and communication.
Ensuring stakeholders are kept up-to-date throughout the emergency response process.
Staying aware of planned utility outages and coordinating preparations for them.
Developing effective reporting on our emergency responses and recommend effective strategies for improvement.
Planning
Continually assessing datacenter and hub room management and design best practices.
Developing roadmaps for modernization of datacenter and hub room spaces.
Acting as project manager for initiatives related to datacenter and hub room changes and/or renovations.
Assessing areas of risk and developing proposals to avoid or mitigate them.
Identifying datacenter related costs and assisting with the development of short and long-term cost projections.
Assessing, analyzing, and reporting on the impact of proposed changes to the environment on electrical load, HVAC load, and long-term operating costs.
Planning for the introduction of new services into the datacenter and participating in the planning for moving services to the cloud.
Qualifications and Skills
Bachelor's degree.
3 years of experience.
The ability to communicate effectively both orally and in writing.
The ability to effectively manage and mentor staff.
Strong organizational skills.
Experience with data center and hub room electrical, HVAC, and UPS systems.
Experience managing large numbers of maintenance contracts for large amounts of equipment.
Experience with property management and equipment life cycling.
Experience coordinating and planning small projects.
Familiarity with network, server, storage and other data center hardware.
Experience with managing vendor relationships for server, storage, network and/or other data center hardware and software.
Familiarity with IT infrastructure and architecture to understand the impact of data center maintenance.
Experience with inside and outside plant cabling.
Preferred
Experience managing an asset management database.
Experience managing medium-sized projects.
Experiencing designing, building, and managing datacenters
Experience managing and maintaining environmental monitoring systems.
Experience writing scopes of work and working with procurement on bids.
Experience with cable plant planning / risk analysis.
Salary and Benefits
A range of $105-115k annually and full University benefits that include 22 days of annual leave, up to 15 holidays, personal and sick days; excellent health, life, and retirement plans; and tuition remission. To learn more about our benefits, click here. TU also offers a variety of great perks and discounts, which can be found here.
This position will be open for a minimum of 14 days. For consideration, please submit a cover letter and resume with your online application.
The safety of our students, faculty, staff, and neighbors has been our top priority and the focus of every one of our decisions since the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the University System of Maryland (USM) has strongly encouraged full COVID vaccination and up-to-date booster shots (when eligible) for all faculty, staff, and students at all schools in the USM as both a reasonable and necessary means of protecting our health and safety.