Lead Data Center Administrator

We are seeking a full-time Lead Data Center Administrator at Garmin's U.S. headquarters in the Greater Kansas City area. The Lead Data Center Administrator provides senior technical leadership for the design, operation, and continuous improvement of the company’s data center infrastructure. This role is responsible for ensuring the reliability, scalability, and efficiency of data center environments while guiding operational standards, infrastructure strategy, and complex technical initiatives. Serves as the primary technical authority for data center infrastructure and collaborates closely with engineering, networking, facilities, and security teams to support enterprise systems and mission-critical operations.

Essential Functions

• Serve as the senior technical expert for data center infrastructure, operations, and best practices.
• Provide guidance and technical oversight for Data Center Administrators and other infrastructure staff.
• Lead complex troubleshooting efforts and root cause analysis for major infrastructure incidents.
• Establish operational standards, technical procedures, and infrastructure best practices.

• Lead the planning, design, and deployment of data center infrastructure including racks, servers, cabling, power distribution, and environmental systems.
• Evaluate and recommend infrastructure solutions that improve performance, scalability, and reliability.
• Ensure infrastructure design accounts for power, cooling, capacity, and physical space requirements.
• Participate in long-term infrastructure planning and capacity management.
• Drive operational improvements that enhance data center uptime, performance, and efficiency.
• Develop and implement operational procedures, automation opportunities, and monitoring improvements.
• Establish and maintain service reliability standards and operational metrics.
• Lead data center infrastructure projects including new deployments, expansions, and technology upgrades.
• Coordinate project activities with facilities, networking, security, and application teams.
• Manage vendor relationships and evaluate vendor solutions for infrastructure initiatives.
• Perform technical feasibility reviews and cost analysis for proposed infrastructure projects.
• Ensure data center infrastructure adheres to security standards, regulatory requirements, and corporate policies.
• Support compliance initiatives related to SOX, PCI, and other regulatory frameworks.
• Lead infrastructure readiness efforts for internal and external audits.
• Serve as a technical escalation point for critical data center incidents.
• Lead post-incident reviews and root cause analysis to prevent recurrence.
• Develop resilience strategies to improve infrastructure fault tolerance and recovery.
• Maintain architecture documentation, infrastructure standards, and operational procedures.
• Drive improvements in documentation quality and technical knowledge sharing across the team.
• Partner with network, systems engineering, security, and facilities teams to support enterprise infrastructure initiatives.
• Communicate infrastructure strategy, risks, and operational updates to leadership and stakeholders.
• Ensure alignment between infrastructure operations and broader IT strategy.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field preferred, or equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
• 7+ years of experience in data center operations, infrastructure engineering, or enterprise systems environments.
• Strong expertise in data center infrastructure including server hardware, rack deployments, power and cooling considerations, and physical infrastructure.
• Experience designing or optimizing data center infrastructure layouts and capacity planning.
• Demonstrated ability to lead complex infrastructure projects and technical initiatives.
• Advanced troubleshooting and root cause analysis skills in production environments.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical concepts.
• Willing to participate in an on-call rotation with the rest of the team (currently every 5 weeks)
• Ability to lift and move equipment up to 50 lbs.
• Ability to work in data center environments including standing for extended periods and working with rack-mounted equipment.
• Ability to access raised floors, ladders, and confined rack spaces when installing equipment
• Willingness and ability to still participate in physical work, within the data center

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting large-scale or multi-site enterprise data center environments.
• Experience working with monitoring platforms, automation tools, or infrastructure management systems.
• Experience coordinating cross-functional technical teams.
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks such as SOX, PCI, or similar regulatory requirements.

Garmin International is an equal opportunity employer.  Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, citizenship, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran’s status, age or disability

This position is eligible for Garmin's benefit program. Details can be found here: Garmin Benefits