Data Center Operations and Maintenance Director

Designworks Talent LLC; Bellevue (WA); Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Designworks Talent LLC seeks a Data Center Operations and Maintenance Director to lead the Operations & Maintenance function for a next-generation AI infrastructure company. Hybrid role based in Bellevue, WA, with three days in the office, reporting to senior leadership and partnering with Engineering, Networking, and Hardware teams.

You will build and scale teams, define SLOs, drive incident response, automation, and reliability across global facilities, while shaping long-term strategy as the

Qualifications

• Experience leading Operations, Site Reliability, Infrastructure Operations, or Data Center Operations.
• Proven success building/scaling operations in cloud infrastructure or AI platforms.
• Deep expertise in production operations and reliability engineering.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams during high-severity incidents.
• Executive-level communication and influencing engineering leadership.
• Comfortable in early-stage org building processes from scratch.

Responsibilities

• Build and grow high-performing Operations & Maintenance teams.
• Develop strategy, structure, and execution model for large-scale AI infra.
• Establish incident response, change mgmt, problem mgmt, reliability processes.
• Lead major incident management and executive communications.
• Drive observability, automation, and continuous improvement.
• Partner with Engineering for deployment readiness.
• Define SLOs and reliability metrics.
• Shape on-call programs, runbooks, and governance.
• Champion root cause analysis and long-term corrective actions.
• Influence architecture and tooling to improve availability and customer experience.
• Help shape the long-term ops org as the company expands globally.

Skills

Operations leadership

Site Reliability

Data Center Ops

Production Engineering

Incident management

Service reliability

Cross-functional teams

Executive communication

Cloud infrastructure

Tools

Grafana

Prometheus

Datadog

PagerDuty

Opsgenie

Job description

Data Center Operations and Maintenance Director

Location: Hybrid | Bellevue, WA (downtown)
Titles: Manager, Director, Senior Director, VP (multiple roles available)

Lead the Operations Organization Behind Next-Generation AI Infrastructure

About the Opportunity

A well-funded, rapidly growing AI infrastructure company is building a next-generation cloud platform designed to power the full lifecycle of artificial intelligence. The organization is developing a comprehensive AI infrastructure, platform, and services portfolio that supports the full spectrum of AI workloads—including large-scale compute, model training, fine-tuning, inference, and emerging agentic AI applications.

Backed by significant long-term investment, the company combines the speed, ownership, and innovation of a startup with the stability and resources of an established parent organization. Engineering teams are intentionally lean, highly collaborative, and AI-native, leveraging automation and modern tooling to operate world-class infrastructure at scale.

As AI data centers come online across North America, the company is building its Operations & Maintenance leadership organization. We're seeking experienced operational leaders who have built and scaled production infrastructure organizations and can establish the people, processes, tooling, and operational discipline required to deliver exceptional reliability and customer experience.

The Opportunity

This is a leadership role responsible for building and scaling the Operations & Maintenance function supporting mission-critical AI infrastructure. Depending on experience, responsibilities may range from leading a regional operations team to defining the long-term operational strategy across multiple facilities.

You will partner closely with Engineering, Infrastructure, Networking, Hardware, and Customer Operations leadership to create a highly reliable, scalable operating model capable of supporting one of the industry's most advanced AI infrastructure platforms.

What You'll Do

• Build, lead, mentor, and grow high-performing Operations & Maintenance teams.
• Develop the operational strategy, organizational structure, and execution model supporting large-scale AI infrastructure.
• Establish world-class operational processes, including incident response, change management, problem management, and service reliability.
• Lead major incident management efforts and executive communications during production events.
• Drive operational excellence through proactive monitoring, observability, automation, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Partner with Engineering to ensure operational readiness for new infrastructure deployments and platform launches.
• Define service level objectives (SLOs), operational KPIs, and reliability metrics across the infrastructure portfolio.
• Build scalable on-call programs, escalation models, runbooks, and operational governance.
• Champion root cause analysis and long-term corrective actions to improve platform resilience.
• Influence infrastructure architecture and operational tooling to improve availability, efficiency, and customer experience.
• Help shape the long-term operations organization as the company expands globally.

What We're Looking For

• Experience leading Operations, Site Reliability, Infrastructure Operations, Data Center Operations, or Production Engineering organizations.
• Proven success building or scaling operations teams within cloud infrastructure, hyperscale environments, AI infrastructure, or large distributed systems.
• Deep expertise in production operations, incident management, service reliability, and operational excellence.
• Experience leading cross-functional teams during high-severity production incidents.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure operations across compute, networking, storage, and hardware environments.
• Demonstrated success building operational processes, organizational structure, and scalable support models in high-growth environments.
• Executive-level communication skills with the ability to influence engineering and business leadership.
• Comfortable operating in an early-stage organization where many systems and processes are being built for the first time.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting hyperscale cloud platforms, GPU infrastructure, AI platforms, HPC environments, or large-scale data centers.
• Experience with modern observability and monitoring platforms such as Grafana, Prometheus, Datadog, or similar technologies.
• Familiarity with incident management platforms including PagerDuty, Opsgenie, or equivalent solutions.
• Experience implementing operational maturity frameworks and reliability engineering best practices.
• Track record of building globally distributed operations organizations.

Compensation

• Competitive base pay for Bellevue market
• Certain roles are eligible for additional rewards, including merit increases, annual bonus, and long term incentives. These awards are allocated based on individual performance
• U.S. based employees have access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan and company match, employees also receive per calendar year, paid holidays.

Location

• Hybrid role based in the Bellevue, WA area.
• Approximately three days per week in the office.
• U.S. work authorization is required. Visa sponsorship is not currently available.

Why Join?

• Build and lead the Operations & Maintenance organization from its earliest stages.
• Influence the strategy, processes, tooling, and culture supporting next-generation AI infrastructure.
• Work alongside experienced engineering leaders solving some of the industry's most complex infrastructure challenges.
• Join a company combining startup agility with substantial long-term investment and stability.
• Play a foundational leadership role in scaling the infrastructure powering tomorrow's AI applications.