Customer Reliability Engineering Manager

Phaidra; United States; Remote; CAD 111,000 - 194,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision insurance

Unlimited PTO

Equity

Remote-friendly (100% remote)

Job summary

Phaidra is seeking a Player-Coach to lead a small team of Customer Reliability Engineers. You will split time between managing accounts and guiding the CRE team, owning deployments and ensuring high-quality support.

You’ll work cross-functionally with Success, Solutions, Data Science, and Product to deliver reliable, scalable service. You will serve as the first escalation point, coach team members, and help turn customer feedback into actionable product requirements.

Qualifications

• Led, coached or mentored engineers in customer-facing or ops roles.
• Turned messy problems into repeatable processes.
• Owned customer escalations from detection to resolution.
• Gave candid, constructive feedback while upholding high standards.
• Helped interview, onboard or train new team members.
• Working knowledge of chiller plant fundamentals and power systems.
• Understanding of electrical distribution systems.
• Applied thermodynamics for cooling/refrigeration/hydronics.
• Familiar with industrial/control protocols like BACnet/Modbus.
• Knowledge of data center cooling methodologies and controls.

Responsibilities

• Manage and develop a team of CREs.
• Hold regular 1:1s; set goals and track growth.
• Attend CRE customer meetings and provide feedback.
• Act as first escalation point for technical/customer issues.
• Support CRE hiring: interview plans and onboarding.

Skills

Leadership

Customer escalation

Process improvement

Interviewing/hiring

Team management

Communication

Requirements gathering

Field operations

Education

Mechanical Engineering

Computer Science

Control Theory

Applied Mathematics

Tools

BACnet

Modbus

Job description

About Phaidra

Phaidra builds AI agents for AI factories. As demand for AI grows, data centers need to get more out of the power and infrastructure they already have. Power, cooling, and compute are closely connected, and making them work efficiently is one of the biggest challenges in scaling AI. Phaidra builds AI agents that help data center operators understand their infrastructure, troubleshoot issues, and optimize how their facilities run. Our agents connect data across IT and OT systems, helping teams find problems faster and use existing resources more effectively. Operators use Phaidra to optimize performance, reliability, and efficiency. From helping technicians get to the root cause of an issue to optimize cooling and power allocation, our work helps data centers maximize tokens per watt. Phaidra was founded in 2019 by former Google, DeepMind, and Trane engineers. Our team brings deep experience in AI, cybersecurity, mission-critical cooling, data centers, and industrial controls. We believe deploying AI in production demands deep domain expertise. We work closely with our partners to tackle challenges around real-world infrastructure at gigawatt-scale. Our team has a track record of applying AI to the toughest problems. We achieved superhuman performance with DeepMind’s AlphaGo and cut the energy needed to cool Google’s data centers by 40%. We know AI deeply, and we know how to apply it in production for massive impact. Phaidra can only achieve its mission if we work well together. Our core values define how we do that: Agency, Velocity, Craft, and Truth. We look for people who embody these values. They help our team deliver excellence consistently and build an engaging, supportive culture. Phaidra is headquartered in the USA, but we are 100% remote with no physical office. We hire internationally with support from our partner, OysterHR. Our team is spread across the USA, Canada, the UK, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, and India.

Who You Are

You are a player-coach who leads a small team of Customer Reliability Engineers. You split your time about evenly between your own accounts and leading the team. On the account side, you own a set of deployed sites. You monitor Prism Insights, diagnose facility anomalies and close the loop with customers. On the team side, you manage a small team of CREs. You coach them, give them direct feedback and turn the team’s daily work into repeatable, scalable processes. You are the team’s first escalation point. You work closely with the Customer Success Managers, Technical Program Managers, Solutions Engineers, Data Scientists, Account Executives and Product. Your goal is to help build the best customer support team in the business.

Responsibilities

• Manage and develop a team of Customer Reliability Engineers.
• Hold regular 1:1s with each CRE. Set goals, track growth and contribute to performance reviews.
• Attend some CRE customer meetings and give direct, actionable feedback afterward.
• Act as the first escalation point for technical and customer issues across the team’s portfolio. Escalate to Customer Success leadership when broader involvement is needed.
• Support the CRE hiring process. Interview candidates, help shape the interview plan and onboard new hires.
• Productionize the team’s workflow. Standardize Insights triage, weekly findings reports, account reviews and customer communication.
• Maintain and improve the CRE playbook, the Hypercare Weekly template and team documentation.
• Coordinate handoffs from implementation teams at CX4.3, CX5.2 and CX6.
• Keep consistent use of ticketing system, time tracking and other business systems across the team.
• Contribute to team resource planning and account assignments.
• Own a portfolio of named accounts. Monitor Prism Insights, then triage and diagnose facility issues.
• Find patterns across the team’s accounts. Partner with Product to turn them into requirements, automated checks or tooling.
• Travel to customer sites when warranted for training or escalations.

Key Qualifications

• You have led, coached or mentored engineers in a customer-facing or operations role, formally or informally.
• You have taken a messy, repeated problem and turned it into a process others follow.
• You have owned customer escalations from detection through resolution.
• You give candid, constructive feedback and hold yourself and others to a high bar.
• You have helped interview, onboard or train new team members.
• Working knowledge of chiller plant fundamentals, configurations, and sequence of operations.
• Understanding of electrical power distribution systems.
• Understanding of applied thermodynamics for cooling systems, refrigeration systems, and hydronics.
• Working knowledge of industrial and commercial control systems and protocols such as BACnet and Modbus.
• Understanding of data center cooling methodologies and controls, including chilled water and direct expansion systems.
• Comfortable working with data center operations teams in the field.
• Ability to turn customer-stated and customer-implied needs into clear requirements for the software development team.
• Excellent communication skills. Ability to explain complex domain concepts and AI and ML concepts to non-experts.
• Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, Control Theory, Applied Mathematics or a related field, or equivalent experience.

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Experience in mission-critical facilities, industrial controls, field service or reliability engineering.
• Prior experience as a team lead or first-line manager.
• Experience scaling a support function through rapid customer growth.
• Experience defining team metrics, SLAs or customer health scoring.
• Experience working with services within cloud platforms.
• Experience applying AI, ML, and LLMs in controls applications.
• Experience with statistics, analytics and domain relevant optimization problems.

Onboarding

In your first 30 days…

• Familiarize yourself with the company handbook, commissioning playbooks and CRE playbook.
• Learn Prism end to end: Insights, alarms, and the views customers use daily.
• Hold introductory 1:1s with each of your CREs. Learn their accounts, strengths and challenges.
• Shadow CRE customer calls across the team.
• Begin taking over your assigned accounts with support from the current owner.

In your first 60 days…

• Run your own accounts independently.
• Establish a regular 1:1 and feedback cadence with each CRE.
• Attend CRE customer meetings and deliver structured feedback.
• Audit the current team workflow. Identify the top gaps in triage, reporting and handoffs.
• Join the CRE interview loop.

In your first 90 days…

• Propose a plan to productionize the team’s workflow and start rolling it out.
• Set individual development goals with each CRE.
• Handle team escalations as first point of contact.
• Lead at least one cross-account improvement with Product, such as an automated check or shared tooling.

General Interview Process

All of our interviews are held via Google Meet, and an active camera connection is required.

• Meeting with People Operations team member (30 minutes)
• Meeting with Hiring Manager (60 minutes)
• Meeting with VP of Engineering (30 minutes)
• Meeting with Head of Customer Success (30 minutes)
• Culture fit interview with Phaidra’s co-founders (30 minutes)

We use Kula as our hiring platform. During your interview, Kula's AI Notetaker will record a transcript of the meeting to allow the interviewer to focus on the interview, not the note taking.

Base Salary

US Residents

• Tier 1 (Largest highest-cost metros): 147,524 USD - 236,038 USD
• Tier 2 (Other major metros): 140,147 USD - 224,236 USD
• Tier 3 (Mid-sized metro areas): 132,771 USD - 212,434 USD
• Tier 4 (All other locations): 125,395 USD - 200,632 USD

Canada Residents

• Tier 1 (Vancouver, Toronto): 151,580 CAD - 242,529 CAD
• Tier 2 (Montreal): 141,475 CAD - 226,360 CAD
• Tier 3 (Waterloo, Ottawa, Calgary): 121,264 CAD - 194,023 CAD
• Tier 4 (Smaller cities / rural areas): 111,159 CAD - 177,854 CAD

In addition to base salary, this position is eligible for equity. Final salary will be determined based on several factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies, experience, expertise, education and location. In some cases, final compensation may fall outside the posted range. Salary ranges are regularly reviewed and may be adjusted in response to market trends.

Benefits & Perks

• Fast-paced, team-oriented environment where your work directly shapes the company’s direction.
• We are a 100% remote company.
• Competitive compensation & meaningful equity.
• Outsized responsibilities & professional development.
• Training is foundational; functional, customer immersion, and development training.
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance (exact benefits vary by region).
• Unlimited paid time off, with a required minimum of 20 days per year.
• Paid parental leave (exact benefits vary by region).
• Flexible stipends to support your workspace, well-being, and continued professional development.
• Company MacBook.

Please note: Not all of Phaidra’s benefits and perks listed above apply to temporary employees such as interns.

On being Remote

We take a thoughtful and intentional approach to remote collaboration. Inspired by pioneers like GitLab, we embrace proven best practices to foster an exceptional remote work environment. Our culture is documentation-first, and we prioritize asynchronous communication to support focus and flexibility across time zones. While we value independence, we stay closely connected through tools like Slack and video conferencing. Weekly all-hands meetings help us align and build strong relationships, and we regularly host virtual team-building activities and social events to maintain a sense of camaraderie.

Equal Opportunity Employment

Phaidra is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with Phaidra is governed on the basis of merit, competence, and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status,