US data centre operator DataBank has named Joe Minarik as Chief Operating Officer (COO).

Minarik will report to DataBank’s CEO, Raul Martynek, and will consolidate all operational functions under his leadership, including data centre and colocation operations, engineering, construction, managed services, network and security, and IT operations.

The company describes its new COO as a “pioneer in the cloud and data centre community” having joined Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) in 2005, a year before the public launch of AWS.

In his 16 years there, Minarik led the development of the company’s underlying data centre and network infrastructure.

In his most recent role as Global Head of Data Center Supply, Minarik was responsible for a multi-billion dollar budget and all data centre strategy and procurement activities across a global footprint of 25 regions, 18 Availability Zones and 275 Points of Presence.

Minarik received his B.S. in computer Science from the University of Michigan and held senior IT operations roles at leading brands such as Disney before joining Amazon.

Martynek said: “Joe Minarik possesses the perfect blend of operational experience and pioneering vision to help DataBank realise its goal of becoming the dominant edge infrastructure platform in the country.

“Consolidating our data centre, colocation, managed services, network, and software development efforts under Joe’s leadership will enable DataBank to deliver a transformative, software-driven, edge infrastructure experience for our customers.”

Commenting on his appointment, Minarik said: “DataBank understands the agile infrastructure experience buyers are seeking, has the right vision of where the edge is going, and the resources to execute on it.

“From facility footprint to software enablement, they have all the pieces in place and I am looking forward to bringing it all together to create something that leads the industry into the future.”