Data Center Construction Manager

Crux AI

Palo Alto (CA)

On-site

USD 180,000 - 320,000

Full time

9 days ago

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Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, vision coverage

401(k) Plan with 4% company match

Bonus/ incentive compensation

Life insurance and disability

Job summary

Crux AI is building integrated AI infrastructure in the United States and seeks an experienced construction leader for data center projects. You will be the owner on site, accountable for safety, quality, schedule milestones, forecast accuracy, and cost, coordinating with general contractors and key trade partners on fast-track builds and fit-outs inside partner shells.

You will drive procurement of owner‑furnished equipment, manage external dependencies, and champion cost discipline,

Qualifications

10+ years in construction management of large technical projects.
Data center experience strongly preferred.
Owner-side or owner’s-rep accountability for safety, quality, schedule, and change orders on multi-hundred-million-dollar projects.
Fast-track delivery experience with prefabrication and work inside live/partner facilities.

Responsibilities

Own onsite execution for one or more projects: safety, quality, schedule milestones, and weekly reporting to the executive team.
Manage GC and trade partner relationships—buyout, change orders, forecast accuracy, and claims avoidance.
Track external dependencies (utilities, permitting, elec/mech equipment) and treat each as a gated milestone with owners.
Own owner-furnished equipment procurement, delivery logistics, storage, sequencing, and QA/QC.
Drive cost discipline, separating scope adds from market-driven cost movement with documented decision records.
Lead prefabrication and field-labric handoffs, ensuring first-time-right turnover and smooth warranty processes.

Skills

Construction leadership

Safety management

Scheduling

Cost control

Vendor and GC management

Fast-track delivery

Tools

Procore

Unifier

Primavera P6

Job description

Built to set the gold standard for integrated AI infrastructure

Crux AI is a newly formed, U.S.-based integrated AI infrastructure company created to remove the physical and operational constraints on consequential AI ambitions. Crux brings together power, high-density data centers, TPU silicon, networking, orchestration software, and ongoing operations as one integrated system.

Crux is being capitalized to plan every layer together, develop each one to demanding standards, and operate the whole system with efficiency and reliability. That gives hyperscalers, frontier AI labs, sovereign customers, enterprises, and AI-native companies greater freedom to pursue the AI they are here to create.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

You will be the owner's construction leader for Crux data center projects — accountable for safety, quality, schedule milestones, forecast accuracy, and cost through GMP and closeout. You will manage general contractors, key trade partners, and owner-furnished equipment on fast-track, high-density builds and fit-outs, including work inside third-party powered shells. Speed to first power and first cluster is the product; your job is to buy schedule intelligently, protect it ruthlessly, and hand operations a building that commissions clean. You will also help set the construction playbook — contracting strategy, prefabrication approach, reporting cadence — that the next projects inherit.

In this role, you will:

Own onsite execution for one or more projects: safety program, quality program, schedule milestones, and weekly project reporting (financial, schedule, quality) to the executive team.
Manage GC and trade partner relationships — buyout, change order negotiation, forecast accuracy, and claims avoidance — and manage tenant-improvement work when building inside partner shells.
Track and drive the external dependencies that actually move data center schedules — utility energization, permitting and inspections, easements, long-lead equipment, and GC mobilization — treating each as a gated milestone with its own owner and remedy, not a line buried in the P6.
Own owner-furnished equipment through the site: procurement coordination, delivery logistics, storage, installation sequencing, and vendor QA/QC for switchgear, generators, cooling plant, and TPU infrastructure.
Run cost discipline the way an owner should: separate elected scope adds (schedule buys, capacity pull-ins) from market-driven cost movement in every forecast, with the decision record to defend both.
Drive schedule levers that reduce field labor in constrained markets — prefabricated skids, power modules, and cooling assemblies — and hold designs accountable for field labor content in constructability reviews.
Lead the construction-to-commissioning-to-operations handoff: commissioning support through Level 5/IST, punch list burn-down, first-time-right turnover packages, and warranty management in live facilities.

SIGNALS OF SUCCESS

After 60 days in this role:

You'll have full command of the project: baseline schedule validated with external dependencies flagged and owned, reporting cadence running, safety and quality programs enforced on site, GC relationship reset where needed.

After 6 months:

You have milestones tracking to forecast with variances explained in elected-versus-market terms; OFE flowing to site on sequence; commissioning plan integrated with ops acceptance criteria; zero recordable-incident trend.

After 1 year:

You will have the first power and first cluster delivered on or ahead of committed dates; closeout and warranty clean
Your project playbook (contracting, prefab, reporting) is adopted as the template for the next builds.

EXPERIENCES, ATTRIBUTES AND MINDSET THAT INDICATE A GOOD MATCH

Experiences

10+ years in construction management of large technical projects, including ground-up greenfield delivery, with direct data center experience strongly preferred; deep working knowledge of electrical and mechanical systems, codes, and fire protection.
Owner-side or owner’s-rep accountability for safety, quality, schedule, GMP accuracy, and change order negotiation on projects of $250M+
Fast-track delivery experience — schedule acceleration decisions, prefabrication strategies, and construction inside or around live/partner facilities.

Attributes

Outcome driven and hands-on leadership. This is a builder’s seat, not a supervisory one. You walk the site, read the contracts, and sit in the schedule sessions — close enough to the work to know when something is off before it shows up in a report.
Commercially sharp without being adversarial. You get to fair outcomes on change orders and claims while keeping the GC leaning in — the next project depends on the same market.

Mindset

High tolerance for ambiguity. Design will still be moving, the supply chain will surprise you, and the customer date will not move. You absorb that and convert it into clear near-term direction for the site rather than passing the chaos downstream.
Schedule realism over schedule theater. You forecast as a range anchored on external-dependency risk, give early signal on the sites carrying it, and never average bad news into a healthy-looking portfolio number.
AI-agentic first. Fluent with AI agents — or committed to becoming so quickly — and you embed them as first principles in how you and your team work, defaulting to agentic workflows before adding headcount or process.

Nice to have (preferred, not required)

High-density AI/HPC build experience (liquid cooling, 100kW+ racks, large UPS/generator plants).
Experience delivering fit-outs inside third-party powered shells or colo partner facilities.
Procore/ACC/Unifier or similar project controls stack fluency.
Commissioning management exposure (Levels 1–5, IST) on mission-critical projects.
Experience at a hyperscaler or neocloud during a multi-site construction ramp.

Salary Range Information

The annual salary range for this position has been estimated based on market data and other factors. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description.

About Crux