We Say HI* 

Local Chief Operating Officer (COO) (m/f/d) for Sovereign Cloud Services
 

German companies and public administrations in this country are ready to accelerate their digital transformation and the use of AI—but they will never compromise on the security of their most sensitive data. This is where Thales in Germany, in partnership with Google Cloud and our new company currently being established, comes into play. With a new, 100% German business unit, we are providing a concrete response to the strict requirements of the BSI. What we are creating is a locally and fully autonomously operated “Trusted Cloud”. It provides access to the broadest service portfolio on the market, while everything remains strictly under European jurisdiction. By combining German and French standards such as SecNumCloud, C5 and C3-A, we offer our customers unequaled resilience and business continuity. This is a turning point for our industry and a decisive step towards a strong, sovereign digital Europe. 

Your mission as COO: 
 

As the Local Chief Operating Officer (S3NS Germany Entity), your responsibilities will encompass 4 main dimensions: Core Solution Deployment, Local Operational Governance & Client Delivery, Local IS/IT and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE). 
 

Core Solution Deployment & Infrastructure Integration:
 

• Joint Deployment Participation: Actively participate in the deployment of the S3NS core solution on local infrastructures, working hand-in-hand with the French Thales teams and the Global Program Director.

• Operational Transition: Ensure the smooth transition of the deployed infrastructure from the "Build" phase (Program/Project) to the "Run" phase (Operations) for the German market.

• Operating Model Alignment: Adapt and implement the S3NS global operating model locally, ensuring that deployment choices meet both French technical core requirements and German operational specificities.
   

2. Local Cloud Operations & Client Delivery (Germany) 
 

• German Operations Supervision: Monitor and oversee the performance, availability, and security of cloud services dedicated to German clients, ensuring strict compliance with local commitments and customer SLAs.

• Incident & Alert Management: Direct and robustify local incident monitoring and alerting processes to ensure rapid detection, isolation, and resolution, in close coordination with the global operational center.

• Continuous Scope Expansion: Supervise the operational onboarding of new GCP services into the German infrastructure perimeter.
   

3. Local IS/IT & Administration System Management 
 

• Local IS/IT Management: Provide essential IT services, workstation management, and infrastructure support to our internal teams based in Germany. 

• Compliance & Capability Maintenance: Maintain high levels of trust and ensure that local systems comply with necessary operational capability standards (SLO) and required certifications.
   

4. SRE Management in Germany: 

•  You’ll be in charge of running an entire Sovereign GCP universe, tackling production incidents 24x7 and developing a deep understanding of the technical services supporting the backbone of GCP services used by millions of customers 

• Team Leadership and Development: Lead, mentor, and grow a team of high-performing SREs. Foster a culture of engineering excellence, ownership, and continuous improvement. 

• Strategic Reliability Oversight (SLIs/SLOs): Define, monitor, and report on key Service Level Indicators (SLIs) and Service Level Objectives (SLOs) for GCP sovereign services. Strategically manage the team's effort to meet and exceed defined availability, scalability, and latency targets.

• Incident Management and Review: Oversee the team's response to critical production incidents (24x7 follow-the-sun model). Drive the post-incident review (post-mortem) process to ensure identification of root causes, extraction of lessons learned, and implementation of preventative measures.

We are looking forward to: 

• 10+ years of experience in IT operations, infrastructure management, or complex system deployment, including Data Centers with multi-site redundancy.

• Proven track record of participating in large-scale infrastructure deployment programs involving multiple corporate stakeholders

• Extensive experience in systems supervision, monitoring, incident management, and critical platform resilience. 

• Strong understanding of cloud architecture and deep familiarity with cybersecurity best practices and sovereign standards. 

• Cross-border Leadership: Demonstrated ability to manage complex interfaces, bridge gaps between corporate cultures, and align decentralized teams under a single operational vision.

• Operations-oriented mindset with a strong focus on robust monitoring, business efficiency, and process improvement (Agile, DevOps, or ITIL frameworks).

• Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, evolving, and highly regulated environment. 

• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills, with a keen eye for detail. 

• Language Skills: Good communication skills (both written and verbal) in German and English are mandatory

 
The Group invests more than €4,5 billion per year in Research & Development in key areas, particularly for critical environments, such as Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, quantum and cloud technologies.  

In 2025, the Group generated sales of €22.1 billion. 
 
For our more than 85,000 employees in 65 countries we open up visionary perspectives, realise individual career paths and enable creative freedom. This is achieved with courage, versatility and the firm intention to make the demanding challenges of our time safer and more inclusive. With our sustainable value-focused management we support diversity actively. 

Say HI* – Your journey to us 

At times of change our international teams are ready to meet the complexity of today with the industry-leading technologies of tomorrow. Will you be part of it? Your Talent Acquisition contact Andre Fuhrmann is looking forward to your online application.  

Andre Fuhrmann – Talent Acquisition Partner  

+49 7156 / 302-22002 

*Human Intelligence 

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