Job Title: Datacenter Exit - Program Director
Location - Chicago, Illinois(Onsite)
Role Overview
The Program Director for the Datacenter Exit Program will lead the end to end strategy, planning, execution, and governance of a multi year initiative to migrate all workloads, applications, and infrastructure from on premises datacenters to the target state environment (Cloud/Hybrid/Colocation). This is a highly strategic leadership role responsible for driving cross functional alignment, ensuring risk free migrations, optimizing cost, and achieving operational transformation objectives.
The ideal candidate brings deep technical understanding of datacenter operations and cloud platforms, strong program management expertise, and proven experience leading large scale infrastructure transition programs.
Key Responsibilities
Program Leadership & Strategy
Define the overall strategy, roadmap, and execution plan for the datacenter exit initiative.
Establish program governance, KPIs, and reporting frameworks.
Partner with senior leadership to align goals, funding, dependencies, and success metrics.
Execution & Delivery Management
Lead the migration of applications, servers, storage, network, databases, and services from datacenters to the target platforms (Cloud, Colo, SaaS).
Ensure program milestones are delivered on time, within scope, and within budget.
Manage risk mitigation, change management, and issue escalation processes.
Cross Functional Collaboration
Coordinate closely with Infra, Network, Cloud, Application, Security, and Business teams.
Work with vendors, integrators, and engineering teams to ensure seamless execution.
Facilitate executive level program updates, steering committees, and stakeholder alignment.
Technical Oversight
Provide guidance on architecture, cloud readiness, workload assessment, migration patterns, and operational cutover planning.
Oversee infrastructure decommissioning, asset disposition, and contract termination activities.
Ensure adherence to security, compliance, and operational standards.
Financial & Resource Management
Manage program budget, cost forecasting, and optimization opportunities.
Ensure resource planning across multiple workstreams (engineering, PMO, operations).
Track savings realization from datacenter closures and cloud migration efficiencies.
Required Skills & Qualifications
12+ years of experience in IT Infrastructure, Cloud, or Datacenter operations.
7+ years of experience managing large scale migration or transformation programs.
Proven leadership in datacenter exit, cloud migration, or hybrid architecture modernization.
Strong knowledge of AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, VMware, compute, network, and storage technologies.
Expertise in program governance, budgeting, roadmapping, and executive communication.
Excellent stakeholder management and vendor management capabilities.
Demonstrated ability to manage high pressure, complex, multi year initiatives.
Preferred Qualifications
Certifications such as PMP, PgMP, ITIL, AWS/Azure Architect are a plus.
Experience with modernization programs (containerization, Kubernetes, serverless).
Background in multi country datacenter operations or global migration programs.
Success Indicators
Complete datacenter exit within approved timelines and budget.
Zero impact migration with strong focus on uptime, security, and risk mitigation.
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