Datacenter Operations Manager

Job Title: DC Site Operations Lead

Location: Santa Clara, CA/ Hillsboro, OR, Onsite, 5 days per week

Contract – 12 Months (with potential for extension)

Interview: Phone or video call; then in-person

Job Summary

Our client is seeking a DC Site Operations Lead to support a rapidly growing datacenter infrastructure organization. This role will be responsible for operational governance, infrastructure readiness, production transition activities, compliance support, operational reporting, and stakeholder engagement across a large-scale datacenter portfolio.

The ideal candidate will possess strong datacenter operations experience, exceptional organizational skills, and the ability to coordinate effectively across engineering, infrastructure, facilities, and operations teams. This individual will play a key role in ensuring new datacenter environments are operationally ready, compliant, and successfully transitioned into production.

Key Responsibilities: Datacenter Operations & Visibility

• Maintain operational visibility across datacenter infrastructure including power, cooling, capacity, rack utilization, monitoring, and space management.
• Define, establish, and report on operational KPIs to measure datacenter health, readiness, utilization, and performance.
• Ensure infrastructure capacity allocations are accurately tracked and managed throughout the asset lifecycle.
• Maintain data accuracy and operational discipline across systems of record and reporting platforms. Operational Readiness & Production Handoffs
• Lead operational acceptance and production transition activities for newly deployed datacenter facilities.
• Partner with engineering and operations teams to validate readiness criteria and acceptance requirements.
• Ensure monitoring, documentation, ownership, operational procedures, and capacity controls are established prior to go-live.
• Identify readiness risks and operational gaps and drive remediation through completion. Cross-Functional Leadership & Coordination
• Serve as a central point of coordination between infrastructure, facilities, engineering, reliability, platform, and operations organizations.
• Manage operational escalations, dependencies, and issue resolution activities.
• Communicate operational risks, constraints, readiness status, and overall infrastructure health to stakeholders and leadership teams.
• Translate technical infrastructure challenges into actionable recommendations and decision-ready updates. Governance, Compliance & Process Management
• Support operational governance efforts and maintain accuracy within DCIM and asset management systems.
• Develop, maintain, and improve SOPs, governance standards, operational procedures, and reporting practices.
• Participate in audit readiness and compliance initiatives.
• Establish and maintain controls that support reliable and consistent infrastructure data management. Continuous Improvement & Operational Excellence
• Drive improvements across infrastructure monitoring, operational processes, governance controls, and overall datacenter performance.
• Identify recurring operational issues and implement corrective actions to improve reliability and scalability.
• Capture lessons learned and integrate best practices into future operational readiness initiatives.
• Develop repeatable standards and operating models that support growth across a global datacenter footprint.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Datacenter Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

• 7+ years of experience supporting enterprise datacenters, cloud infrastructure, hyperscale environments, or high-density compute operations.

• Strong understanding of:

1. Datacenter power and cooling systems
2. Capacity planning and utilization management
3. Infrastructure monitoring
4. Rack and space management
5. Production readiness and operational governance

• Experience working across engineering, facilities, infrastructure, SRE, and operations teams.
• Experience developing and tracking operational KPIs, metrics, and governance programs.
• Experience with DCIM platforms, datacenter asset management tools, and infrastructure data management.
• Knowledge of operational acceptance processes, production handoffs, compliance requirements, and audit readiness activities.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to present technical information to both engineering and leadership audiences. Preferred Qualifications
• Experience supporting hyperscale, cloud, AI, or large-scale compute infrastructure environments.
• Experience building scalable operational frameworks and governance programs.
• Knowledge of datacenter compliance and audit standards.
• Strong systems-thinking mindset with an emphasis on operational excellence.
• Proven ability to identify risks, remove blockers, and drive results across multiple stakeholder groups.
• Demonstrated success influencing outcomes without direct authority.
• Experience supporting rapidly growing infrastructure organizations with evolving operational requirements. Additional Information
• This position supports large-scale datacenter operations and infrastructure readiness efforts.
• The successful candidate will work closely with engineering, facilities, operations, reliability, and infrastructure teams