Bare-Metal Provisioning Recovery Leader

The mandate

A revised provisioning profile applied incompatible firmware settings, storage layouts and fabric identities across several edge-site server cohorts. Automated rebuilds repeated the fault faster than field teams could isolate it, delaying mobile-core capacity and creating uncertain hardware state. The bare-metal leader resigned after rollback depended on manual vendor utilities absent from the declared recovery path.

The interim must take the Johannesburg seat within three weeks and serve for fourteen months, with a possible two-month extension if radio or core launch dates move the final capacity exercise. A permanent platform search begins after three representative edge sites complete qualified fleet rollout, expected in month eight. The successor will overlap for six weeks and command the last site rebuild.

Handover requires every hardware cohort to have signed firmware, boot, storage, fabric and security profiles; provisioning and rollback to operate without undocumented vendor access; inventory state to reconcile physical and control records; three site-loss or rebuild drills to meet capacity windows; and the permanent leader to accept exceptions, spares, supplier defects and release authority.

The interim may stop fleet rollout, quarantine cohorts, set golden profiles, reject hardware evidence, sequence capacity releases, redirect internal staff and approve up to ZAR 260 million inside the recovery. Permanent hiring, new server architecture, core-software changes, long-term supplier replacement and decisions above ZAR 55 million require council approval. Security boot and network-certification controls cannot be waived.

Radio optimisation, subscriber-product design, public-cloud migration and field civil works are explicitly out of scope. The mandate owns bare-metal discovery and provisioning, firmware and configuration authority, hardware qualification, rollback, inventory truth, edge-site capacity release and the team operating those controls.

Why this seat is open

The failed rollout showed that automation could reproduce an invalid hardware state consistently across distant sites, and leadership departure removed the integrator across suppliers and platform teams. Delayed core capacity now affects regional launch commitments. A temporary executive must qualify one repeatable fleet path, exercise recovery without hidden tools and transfer permanent command before scale resumes.

What you will own

• Reconstruct profile generation, approval, provisioning, firmware, boot, storage, fabric, identity and inventory outcomes across affected cohorts.
• Establish authoritative hardware classes and signed golden profiles with compatibility, expiry, evidence and owner for every component.
• Decide cohort quarantine, rework, rollback, rebuild and release disposition using measured network-capacity consequence.
• Remove undocumented vendor utilities by integrating approved recovery functions or explicitly governing necessary break-glass access.
• Build qualification gates for supply provenance, firmware, secure boot, storage, fabric, performance, failure and field operability.
• Command drills involving control-plane loss, failed firmware, unavailable boot service, fabric mismatch, site rebuild and supplier access loss.
• Transfer profiles, fleet state, exceptions, defects, spares, test evidence and release rights through successor-led provisioning.

Candidate qualifications

• Held executive responsibility for large bare-metal fleets supporting telecom, edge cloud, hyperscale or similarly distributed infrastructure.
• Recovered automated provisioning that propagated unsafe firmware, boot, storage or network state across hardware cohorts.
• Designed signed golden profiles, compatibility gates and physical-to-control inventory reconciliation at fleet scale.
• Eliminated undocumented vendor recovery dependencies or bounded them through auditable break-glass controls.
• Qualified capacity releases across heterogeneous suppliers and remote sites using repeatable physical tests.
• Handed fleet provisioning authority to permanent leadership after witnessed rebuild and rollback exercises.

Non-negotiables

• Can relocate to Johannesburg within three weeks and travel monthly to African edge or integration facilities.
• Will accept exclusive executive responsibility and continuous escalation duty during fleet rollout and site rebuilds.
• Brings hands-on bare-metal provisioning recovery; virtual-machine or application deployment alone is insufficient.
• Must disclose relationships with server, firmware, storage, network, telco-cloud and field-service suppliers.

1. 49 words maximum. State your earliest Johannesburg start and the largest bare-metal fleet fault you personally contained.
2. 49 words maximum. Describe a golden profile that was internally consistent but wrong for one physical hardware cohort.
3. 49 words maximum. Which rebuild test proves an edge site no longer depends on an undocumented vendor utility?