On behalf of our client, one of Germany’s largest and most successful digital groups, which is responsible for a core set of consumer-facing platforms and manages a complex, multi-site infrastructure that handles millions of active users and operates at petabyte-scale.

This is not a traditional corporate IT role; it is a fast-paced, high-availability, performance-driven environment focused on delivering 24/7 service to the consumer market.

The Opportunity

We are seeking a VP of Operations to lead our large, mission-critical operations organisation of 80-100 staff across 6 technical departments. This is a crucial executive leadership role responsible for the entire technical strategy and performance of our core infrastructure.

Your Immediate Mission

The successful candidate will be tasked with simultaneously driving large-scale strategic and operational projects:

1. Major Data Centre Move: Lead the physical and logical replication and migration of core infrastructure as part of a multi-year data centre transformation project.
2. Platform Modernisation: Oversee the technical renewal of our core systems and scale infrastructure to support new Gen AI features.
3. Governance and People: Act as a demanding "Front Man" who reports to the C-suite, enforces structured architecture governance, and directly coaches 5 Department Heads to improve project management discipline.

The basic requirements are as follows:

• Proven history of managing technical Operations/Infrastructure teams of 30–50+ permanent staff (FTEs), including managing subordinate managers.
• Current or previous experience in a high-volume B2C consumer service (e-commerce, web portal, telecommunications, or high-traffic media/gaming).
• Expertise in managing on-premise/colocation environments, including physical logistics and vendor management.
• Hands-on or strategic leadership of systems, including Linux, Load Balancers (resilience and geo-redundancy), Cisco Networking, VMware/Virtualisation, and Automation platforms (Puppet, Ansible, or Chef). Knowledge of major cloud services is also highly valuable.

This position is based in Munich (3 days/week office presence is required) and offers a competitive salary package in the €170,000 – €220,000 range (depending on experience)