Principal, AI Data Centres

Echelon; Riyadh; On-site; SAR 900,000 - 1,300,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Housing allowance

Transport allowance

Education allowance

Employee equity program

Job summary

Echelon is seeking a senior leader to transform partnerships into scalable capacity with a focus on data centre, cloud and power programmes. You will anchor long-term relationships, shape investment cases, and build the team and operating model to deliver capacity, while aligning with partners, investors and customers.

You will drive commercial depth, navigate complex governance, and lead cross-functional teams across regions, ensuring robust value creation and sustainable growth for Echelon.

Qualifications

• Experience leading data centre, cloud or power programmes for operators, developers or hyperscalers.
• Proven ability to lead cross‑company partnerships from signature to delivery.
• Strong grasp of project economics: capital cost, Opex, revenue share and returns.
• Fluency in Arabic is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Anchor long-term partnerships with operators and suppliers.
• Scale programmes across lifecycles, with value-driven terms.
• Expand the pipeline to AI providers, hyperscalers, national programmes.
• Build and lead the internal team and operating model.
• Maintain quality gates and governance with partners.
• Grow engineering and operational capability alongside partners.
• Develop investment cases for new capacity.

Skills

Partnership leadership

Commercial depth

Financial modelling

Team building

AI infrastructure knowledge

Job description

THE ROLE: FROM PARTNERSHIP TO CAPACITY IN SERVICE

Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, you lead Echelon’s infrastructure partnerships and the business built on them: the partners Echelon builds with, the customer programmes it delivers with them, the capability it develops alongside them and the investment cases behind new capacity. You decide where Echelon advises and where it builds with its partners, and you make each of those positions pay, working with the CRO’s account teams, Finance and Legal. You build the team from its first hires and lead it, and you set the model by which Echelon and its partners work together.

• Anchor the partnerships: Long-term relationships with the operators and suppliers whose designs and standards Echelon builds on, run with a shared plan, clear commitments and governance that holds both sides to them.

• Win at programme scale: Large capacity programmes won with our partners and structured across their whole life rather than one site at a time, on terms that reward Echelon for the value it adds.

• Widen the pipeline: The next customers that need capacity, from AI providers and hyperscalers to national programmes and large enterprises, and the next partners that extend what Echelon can deliver.

• Build the team and the model: The team you hire and lead, and the operating model around it: what Echelon does itself, what its partners do and what it buys, the cost and the governance, and the moment capability should come in-house.

• Hold the standard: Quality gates, operating procedures and liability lines, agreed with our partners, that bring every site Echelon touches up to the benchmark of the best operators.

• Grow the capability: An Echelon team that learns alongside its partners and grows from engineering and build management into network, security and facility operations.

• Build the investment case: The business cases behind new capacity, from demand, power and the chip-generation ramp to capital structure, offtake and returns, built to hold up in front of customers, partners and investors.

AI AND TECHNOLOGY FIRST

• Infrastructure record: You have built or led data centre, cloud or power programmes, for an operator, a developer, a hyperscaler or the firms that advise them. What you have delivered counts for more than the years.

• Partnership leadership: You have led partnerships between companies of different size and culture, and kept both sides committed from signature to delivery.

• Commercial and financial depth: You structure deals and read a project model: capital and operating cost, revenue share, offtake and returns hold no mystery for you.

• AI infrastructure depth: You understand what AI workloads change: power density, liquid cooling, the pace of chip generations, and their effect on design, cost and schedule.

• Team builder: You have hired and led teams of specialists, built a capability from its first hire and its first project, and set standards that hold as it scales.

STRONG ADVANTAGE

• Hyperscale and AI campuses: Exposure to campuses of 100 MW and above, from site and power to handover and operations.

• Licensed operating models: Experience of licensed or franchised models, where one company’s design and operating standard is delivered by another.

• Capital partners: Exposure to infrastructure investors, project finance or joint ventures.

• Arabic: Professional fluency in Arabic.

OUR VALUES

• Customer first: You measure your work by customer outcomes, and prioritise accordingly.

• Ownership mentality: You own outcomes end to end. When something breaks or stalls, you treat it as yours to fix.

• Clear communicator: You explain complex systems simply, to operators and executives alike, and make the value of your work visible.

• Comfortable with ambiguity: You make progress with incomplete information, partial data and unfamiliar environments, and you enjoy solving problems where there is no structure yet.

• Long-term builder: You invest in Echelon’s long-term success, bringing field insight back into our strategy and operations.

• Builds others: You measure yourself by the people you develop and the capability you build with customers.

THE SEAT

• Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

• Reports to: The Chief Executive Officer

• Travel: Regular time with customers and on sites, and some with our partners’ teams in the United States.

• Package: A base salary with housing, transport and education allowances, medical cover, and equity through the employee equity programme. Terms are shared at offer stage.

HOW WE WORK

You start from the problem, not the tool. You meet an unclear brief or a broken environment with energy and a plan.

• Curiosity: You learn how the work really happens on site and keep learning as the stack moves.

• Speed: You move from brief to a first working result quickly and do not wait for perfect conditions.

• Rigour: You test claims against the data, check what is delivered and can explain every choice.

• Confidence & humility: You challenge and accept challenge, and change your view on evidence, without ego.

• Autonomy: You decide with incomplete information and own it; from an outcome, you organise the work yourself.

• Resourcefulness: Missing access, partial data, an unfamiliar organisation: you find a way with what is available.

• Situational leadership: You lead when the moment calls for it, and follow when someone else has the better call.

• A force multiplier: Your playbooks, reviews and coaching make the whole bench faster.

• AI-native depth: AI tools are part of how you plan, model and decide, and you understand from the inside what AI asks of the infrastructure that runs it.

• Where you are: A senior infrastructure builder and partnership leader, ready to build a team and a business, and at ease at the negotiating table, on site and in front of an investment committee.