Director, Infrastructure & Operations - Europe

Job Description

Summary

As the Global Infrastructure and Operations Lead (GIO) for Europe you will be part of Sysco’s Global Business Technology Infrastructure organization. Sysco’s Business Technology department brings together technology and process expertise into one streamlined, customer and business-oriented team. Our focus is to provide innovative business solutions that eliminate waste, maximize customer satisfaction, and improve business productivity.  

This highly visible critical role will be focused on ensuring delivery of technical operations strategy and services across Sysco Europe’s infrastructure landscape. In this advanced role, you will lead an overall central team of ~100 resources (both employees and contractors with ~6-8 direct reports) to deliver best in class IT Services. You will be required to collaborate and partner with business and other technical leaders at all levels across Sysco’s global landscape by exhibiting advanced  communication and influence skills, work under high demands, manage multiple sometimes competing priorities, ensure implementation of best practices and techniques, have deep and extensive knowledge of key infrastructure capabilities (including network, cloud technologies, data centres etc.), and be able to efficiently communicate to those various partners with varying levels of understanding. The ability to assess and understand existing, complex technical solutions is a must along with having the strategic vision to simplify and modernize systems, remove redundancies and improve inefficiencies.

Essential Functions

• Develop a strong advanced understanding of Sysco’s European business units, their goals, business strategy and technology landscape.
• Work with business and technology leaders to execute the technical operations strategy, future state vision and technology roadmaps to achieve strategic goals.
• Define, document and maintain comprehensive infrastructure views (current and future) 
• Possess strong financial acumen and demonstrated experience managing a large budget; agility to reforecast and make strategic and tactical changes as the business ebbs and flows.
• Execute the future state infrastructure vision and Sysco’s global infrastructure strategy, aligning with global Enterprise Architecture (EA) standards/guidelines.
• Provide technology leadership, infrastructure oversight and high-level solution design guidance for key technology initiatives and strategic planning. Contribute to initial infrastructure set-up and project requirements.  Assure that a long-term support process is in-place including managed support, ongoing patching and updates, monitoring and callout alerts and support contracts with partners.
• Stay vigilant on up to date on emerging technologies and assist with technology vendor and product selection activities.
• Balance and flex both strategic and tactical work and where required get into the detail to support diagnosis root cause and provide solutions. 
• Remain calm and level-headed under pressure; is crisp and concise in messaging. 
• Work with the Mergers & Acquisition team to conduct M&A due diligence and advance an M&A playbook.
• Successfully impact and influence in both a direct and matrixed organizational structures.
• Prioritize and is highly organized; agile to handle multiple competing priorities.  
• Exhibit highly seasoned interpersonal and communications skills that are highly credible and sustainable across all levels of leadership and partner groups. Established a communications protocol that ensure regular, ad hoc communications are clear timely to all stakeholders. 
• Translate highly technical vernacular into layperson’s terms, can flex from concise messages to the very detailed and is able to tell the story to the most senior leader and up and down the hierarchy.
• Is agile and realistic in scope formation with creative solutions that meet the restraints and demands within the Sysco culture.  
• Balance by thinking globally and acting locally. 
• Model and demonstrate diversity and inclusive behaviours in all ways of work; exhibits cultural awareness in said diverse settings (Global; European markets) and has experience of successfully leading across those markets.
• Adopt and lead through appropriate change management tools and plans with the ability to work through transformational agenda/s for centralized alignment, standardization, and ongoing efficiencies.  
• Build and maintain effective working relationships with business/technology stakeholders, subject-matter experts and key vendor partners.
• Serve as primary contact manging vendor management; acumen in working through vendor management as appropriate or needed.
• Execute Sysco Europe network technology strategy and roadmap in conjunction with Sysco’s overall strategy. Network technology includes WAN, SDLAN, Wireless RF, routers, cabling, switches, access points, VPN, mobile phone contracts, etc.  
• Manage Sysco Europe cloud technologies and collocated data centers strategy and roadmap. Facilitate for Sysco Europe the adoption of cloud-based applications by guiding projects through the learning curve for server set-up, and turnover for ongoing management. 
• Participate and lead fully in the change and incident process for Sysco Europe infrastructure. Provide quality communication and documentation in support of changes to infrastructure, root cause analysis and solutions.
• Ensure Sysco Europe Infrastructure strategy addresses regulatory compliance requirements.

Minimum Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer science and or equivalent work experience.
• Vast experience in IT, with Infrastructure subdomain experience.
• Experienced as a senior people leader; preferably across multiple diverse geographies (Europe) 
• Ability to lead, coach and develop teams of ~100 located across expansive diverse geographies.
• Experience working in a large, multi-unit enterprise context and familiarity with mergers & acquisitions and business-unit integration processes/activities.
• Proven track record of hands-on technical delivery including systems analysis, development, project management and/or production support.
• Demonstrates agility to lead and coordinate the resolution of critical incidents across the Europe to support business operations when required, across a 24/7 operation.
• Extensive knowledge of a wide variety of technologies including ERP, consumer-facing web/mobile, custom development, application integration, infrastructure, cloud, SaaS, and/or security technologies
• Self-starter and ability to drive results with minimal supervisory direction. 
• Strong-interpersonal and influencing skills to enable effective completion of tasks both individually and within matrixed teams.
• Ability to break down complex, multi-faceted concepts into understandable solutions/options and effectively communicate to a range of business and technical audiences.
• Experience with Agile and DevOps environments is strongly preferred.
• Can sit anywhere in the existing European footprint; able to travel as required (~25-30%).

The above information has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by associates within this classification.  IT is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities, and qualifications required of associates assigned to this job.

Additional Information

At Sysco International everyone is welcome. We don’t want you to ‘fit our culture’ we want you to help define it and we actively celebrate the unique talents of each and every colleague. We don’t just look at your CV, we’re more focused on who you are and your potential. As part of our values, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive culture where everyone has a voice, is appreciated and has the same opportunities. We work hard to ensure that everyone feels part of our business, as we care for one another and connect the world through food and trusted partnerships. Our ultimate goal is to ensure that everyone belongs and thrives at Sysco International and we recognise that Sysco International can only thrive when everyone feels they belong. We'll do everything we can to support you during your application. If you need us to make any adjustments to our recruitment process, speak to our resourcing team who will be happy to support you.