Datacenter Operations Manager

Locations: Louisiana or Indiana | Relocation required (fully covered)The mission We're building the compute infrastructure that determines who shapes the future of AI. Whoever deploys frontier compute fastest — at gigawatt scale — decides whether that future expands human freedom or narrows it. This is a confidential search on behalf of a company doing exactly that: acquiring power, designing and building data centers, and operating them, faster than anyone else in the market. Why join Full ownership of a site running at a scale most operators never touch — the fleet you run will draw more power than some countries No inherited playbook — no prior operations org has run at this speed and scale, so the standards you set become the standard, company-wide Real leadership scope: you build and lead the entire site team — facility, hardware, and network operators — not just one function Direct, high-visibility partnership with construction, commissioning, and colo/utility partners while the site is live and still being built Relocation handled end-to-end — you're not solving your own logistics problem on top of a new job Role scope Lead 24/7/365 operation of all critical infrastructure at your site — electrical distribution (UPS, generators, switchgear), mechanical and liquid cooling, fire/life safety, and building controls — accountable for availability against customer SLAsOwn site safety in partnership with HSE, including hazardous energy control, electrical safety, and LOTO discipline across a mixed employee and contractor workforce Build and lead the full site team — facility operators alongside hardware and network operators — owning shift coverage, on-call rotations, performance, and development Run the hardware and network repair operation: own ticket queues, drive triage, prioritization, break-fix, and RMA workflows, holding time-to-repair against customer commitments as the fleet scales Run incident and change management for the site: lead severity response as the escalation point, deliver root cause analyses on 5- and 10-day clocks, and drive corrective actions that fix classes of problems, not instances Partner with construction, commissioning, colo providers, and utilities while the site is live and still being built, driving operational readiness and clean handover into operations Who we're looking for You've run 24/7 critical facility operations where availability was contractual, and you can walk through the incidents that tested it You know electrical and mechanical infrastructure deeply enough to dig into the details with your technicians — you've stood in front of switchgear or a CDU and known which questions to ask You've run a high-volume repair or break-fix operation — server fleets or network fabrics — where queue discipline and time-to-repair were the scoreboard You've built and developed technical teams through hiring, coaching, and hard performance calls — your former reports would say you made them better You've operated procedure-based safety programs (LOTO, electrical safety, hazardous energy control) and held the line when schedule pressure pushed against them You've partnered with construction and commissioning teams during live builds and caught operational and safety gaps before they reached handover You write and present clearly enough to put an RCA or status update in front of an executive or customer without translation