Manager, Technical Operations

Important: This role will be onsite out of our downtown Phoenix data center office on a hybrid basis (2 days per week)  

About the Role: 

The Guitar Center is seeking a dynamic Manager, Technical Operations to lead the Guitar Center Technology Operations Center (GTOC). This critical role oversees physical data center operations in Phoenix, AZ, and other corporate locations, while also leading enterprise-wide Major Incident, Change, and Problem Management through our centralized command center. The GTOC Manager ensures technology availability, fast incident response, and continual service improvement across enterprise systems and services. 
You will lead a cross-functional team responsible for physical server hosting, hands-on data center operations, and L1 infrastructure and application support, while also driving GTOC’s role in observability, hypercare, service validation, and enterprise-wide incident, change, and problem processes. 

Why Join Us? 

This is a strategic leadership opportunity at the heart of Guitar Center’s data modernization journey. You’ll shape the evolution of our database and cloud infrastructure, lead innovation in next-gen data platforms, and support the scalable, high-performance systems that power our retail, digital, supply chain, and analytics initiatives. 

Responsibilities: 

Data Center & Corporate Infrastructure Operations 

• Oversee day-to-day operations of the Phoenix data center and physical infrastructure across corporate locations. 

• Manage hardware installation, cabling, asset tracking, and vendor coordination. 

• Provide on-site support for infrastructure activities including rack/stack, troubleshooting, and lifecycle management. 

• Ensure adherence to physical access, environmental monitoring, and maintenance standards. 

Guitar Center Technology Operations Center (GTOC) Leadership 

• Lead the 24x7 GTOC, ensuring effective L1 support, alert monitoring, and incident response. 

• Drive service observability and performance visibility using tools like Datadog and PagerDuty. 

• Oversee service validation, hypercare, and operational readiness for new and updated services 

Major Incident Management 

• Act as Incident Commander for enterprise-wide Priority 1 and critical outages. 

• Coordinate structured triage, escalation, communication, and resolution across teams. 

• Facilitate weekly executive review sessions to analyze major incidents and identify systemic trends. 

Change Management 

• Serve as Change Management Process Owner, ensuring production changes are governed, communicated, and risk assessed. 

• Lead the Enterprise Change Advisory Board (CAB) to review, document, and approve change requests. 

• Partner with technical teams to enhance change reliability, auditability, and automation. 

Problem Management 

• Own the Problem Management process to identify root causes and drive long-term solutions. 

• Develop automation and self-healing workflows to improve stability and reduce manual efforts. 

• Lead problem review sessions and coordinate with engineering teams on permanent fixes. 

Team Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration