Data Centre Engineering Lead - South Island - Christchurch - 62235 - Spark

General information

Location

Christchurch

Expertise

Critical Environments

Job Level

Experienced

Employment Type

Permanent full-time

Close Date

24-Sep-2025

Ref #

62235

Description & Requirements

As New Zealand's largest telecommunications and digital services company, Spark's purpose is to help all of New Zealand win big in a digital world. We provide mobile, broadband, and digital services to millions of New Zealanders and thousands of New Zealand businesses.

We operate in an exciting and constantly evolving industry, where the pace of change brings new and unique challenges every day, so we operate using Agile ways of working to allow us to meet the fast-changing needs of our customers. Agile replaces the traditional hierarchical organisational structure to produce a transparent, collaborative environment with highly productive teams who are empowered to deliver better outcomes for our customers, communities, and all of New Zealand.

About the Role:

The Data Centre Engineering Lead is accountable for end‑to‑end engineering leadership across our South Island data centre footprint—keeping the lights on (high availability, resilience, and safety), lifting performance (standards, automation, efficiency), and delivering projects (upgrades, expansions, remediation) in live environments without compromising uptime or safety.

This role blends hands‑on technical oversight with engineering leadership and vendor governance, ensuring our critical power, cooling, network, and security infrastructure is engineered, maintained, and evolved in line with best practice and business growth.

Key Responsibilities

Engineering Leadership & Operational Excellence

Own day‑to‑day engineering operations across the campuses to maintain uptime and resilience.
Provide technical oversight for critical infrastructure (power, cooling, network, security) and ensure standards/policies/compliance frameworks are applied.
Lead asset management and lifecycle planning, including risk identification and mitigation for all critical systems.
Oversee maintenance activities, capacity planning, and infrastructure upgrades aligned to business growth and SLAs.
Maintain accurate engineering documentation, asset registers, and compliance reports.
Promote energy efficiency, sustainability, and resilience across the estate.

Continuous Improvement & Innovation

Identify and implement operational improvements and automation opportunities.
Apply new technologies and data insights to enhance reliability and performance.
Foster a continuous improvement culture within engineering and cross‑functional teams.
Contribute to strategic planning for future expansion and innovation.

Project & Stakeholder Management

Plan and deliver data centre projects end‑to‑end—scope, scheduling, coordination, and commissioning—on time and within budget in live environments.
Coordinate with Operations, IT, Security, and Compliance to align priorities to business objectives.
Manage contracts and vendor relationships for critical infrastructure services.
Participate in the on‑call roster and support incident response as needed.

What We Value

High initiative: proactive, anticipates issues, and follows through.
Integrity: safety- and compliance‑first; transparent, trustworthy.
Ownership mindset: detail‑driven with strong accountability for outcomes.
Clear communicator: adapts technical detail for different audiences.

What experience you'll bring?

10+ years in data centre engineering, critical infrastructure, or related fields.
Proven project delivery in data centres, critical infrastructure, or related fields. including upgrades and expansions in live environments.
Strong knowledge of mechanical, electrical, and IT infrastructure in hyperscale/large data centres or similar mission critical facilities such as Hospitals or other high dependency environments.
Experience leading engineering teams and managing complex, multi‑site operations.
Deep understanding of data centre standards/certifications: Uptime Tier levels, ASHRAE, TIA‑942, ISO 27001, ISO 50001.
Skilled in analysis, problem‑solving, and decision‑making under pressure; excellent stakeholder communication.
Familiar with asset management, lifecycle planning, and risk assessment frameworks.
Proficient with BMS, SCADA, and DCIM platforms.

Nice to have: Engineering degree; CPEng; PMP/Prince2; EWRB registration.

WHY CHOOSE US:

Diversity and Inclusion: Te Kanorau me te Whakawhāiti mai

At Spark, we are constantly looking for ways to build a more inclusive culture.  Our vision is for diversity and inclusion to be "how things are done at Spark", embedded into our day-to-day activities, standards, and business practices.  We want you to feel totally comfortable bringing your whole self to work regardless of your gender, ethnicity, orientation, age, or ability.

Sustainability: Toitū

Sustainability is a key focus for us.  We are dedicated to supporting Aotearoa New Zealand's recovery and economic transformation.  The principle of equity is at the very heart of our approach, and we remain committed to working in partnership to make a positive contribution to digital equity in line with our focus on Diversity and Inclusion.

Benefits: Awhina

Our people matter and we make sure we look after them. As a valued employee of Spark, we've got our people covered with a range of leading benefits including:

Wellbeing - Comprehensive medical insurance, life and income protection.  Access to wellbeing coaches, EAP and in-house Specialist Clinical support through our leading Mahi Tahi Wellness programme.

Hybrid ways of working - for most teams at Spark this means being in the office for 4 days a week, and 1 day being flexible.

Leave - in addition to four weeks annual leave, we offer purchased leave, enhanced parental leave support and study leave.

Spark Credit – we provide permanent employees with $120 monthly Spark credit to use on any of our amazing products.

Spark Share scheme – periodically we offer the opportunity to buy into our share scheme.

Career development – access to an internal marketplace that connects employees with experiential, on the job learning across Spark.

Due to the nature and urgency of this role, we are only considering applicants that are based in New Zealand with permanent residency, citizenship, or a valid work visa (with at least 18 months remaining).

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