Data Center Operations Lead

Socket.dev; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Job summary

Mount Thor is hiring a hands-on infrastructure leader to build and operate the physical foundation of our compute platform. You will own the data center footprint, lead fit-out and deployment, and manage end-to-end hardware workflows from receiving to production handoff.

Ideal candidates bring deep hands-on experience with racks, power, cooling, cabling, and incident response in mission-critical environments. Expect regular site travel and on-call rotations as part of the role.

Qualifications

• Hands-on data center operations experience.
• Experience with racks, PDUs, cooling, and hardware troubleshooting.
• Ability to travel regularly to Mount Thor sites and work in data halls.
• Experience in mission-critical environments such as colo, cloud, or AI infra.

Responsibilities

• Own the delivery and operation of Mount Thor’s data center footprint from buildout to production readiness.
• Lead data hall fit-out and infrastructure deployment including rack layouts, power, cooling, and cabling.
• Interface with colocation providers, contractors, electricians, vendors, and remote-hands teams as Mount Thor’s technical representative.
• Develop hardware deployment processes from receiving to production handoff with clear inspection and acceptance criteria.
• Own day-two site operations including monitoring, maintenance, RMAs, spare parts, and capacity changes.
• Define and maintain operating procedures, change controls, escalation paths, and production handoffs.
• Lead incident response and post-incident improvements across sites.
• Track site health with metrics like capacity delivery, availability, and power headroom.
• Incorporate operational learnings into future designs and scalable, repeatable processes.

Skills

Rack hardware

Server hardware

Network equipment

Power distribution

Cooling systems

Data center operations

Vendor management

On-call rotation

Data hall work

Tools

DCIM

CMMS

Asset management

Ticketing systems

Capacity planning tools

Job description

Mount Thor is hiring a hands‑on infrastructure leader to build and operate the physical foundation of our compute platform.

Who We Are

Mount Thor makes Apple hardware (macOS and Apple Silicon) available and performant at datacenter scale for AI workloads. We take consumer hardware and build the infrastructure platform around it to enable consumption as elastic compute exposed through developer-friendly interfaces. Our customers use us to develop computer-use model capabilities, deploy long-running agents, and accelerate agentic engineering.

The Team

Data Center Operations turns space, power, cooling, network connectivity, and hardware into healthy production capacity.

The team owns the physical lifecycle of Mount Thor’s infrastructure. This starts with site readiness, fit-out, and commissioning. It continues through hardware deployment, maintenance, repair, upgrades, and decommissioning.

Data Center Operations also defines how work is performed safely and consistently. The team builds the procedures, controls, vendor relationships, and operating metrics required to scale across sites.

The team works closely with Network Infrastructure, Fleet, Security, Supply Chain, and our data center partners. Our goal is to bring capacity online quickly and keep it reliable throughout its life.

In this role you will

• Own the delivery and operation of Mount Thor’s data center footprint. Take new capacity from facility handoff through production readiness.
• Lead data hall fit‑out and infrastructure deployment. Coordinate rack layouts, power distribution, cooling, structured cabling, network handoffs, hardware installation, and commissioning.
• Serve as Mount Thor’s technical representative with colocation providers, contractors, electricians, cabling teams, carriers, equipment vendors, logistics partners, and remote-hands teams.
• Build the hardware deployment process from receiving through production handoff. Establish clear standards for inspection, staging, labeling, asset registration, installation, cabling, power-up, validation, and acceptance.
• Own day‑two site operations. Build strong processes for monitoring, maintenance, break‑fix, spare parts, RMAs, inventory, capacity changes, and hardware retirement.
• Define and maintain operating procedures. This includes standard operating procedures, methods of procedure, emergency procedures, maintenance windows, change controls, escalation paths, and production handoffs.
• Lead the response to physical infrastructure incidents. Coordinate on‑site work, restore service, complete root‑cause analysis, and turn failures into lasting improvements.
• Track the health of each site. Establish clear metrics for capacity delivery, availability, deployment time, incident rate, repair time, vendor performance, inventory accuracy, and power and cooling headroom.
• Feed operational experience back into future designs. Improve rack systems, fixtures, cabling, power, cooling, hardware serviceability, spares, and deployment methods.
• Build a repeatable operating model that can scale across sites. Reduce manual work with clear systems, lightweight automation, and reliable source-of-truth data.

You might thrive in this role if you have

• Brought new data center capacity from buildout or fit‑out through commissioning and live production operation.
• Deep hands‑on experience with racks, servers, network equipment, copper and fiber cabling, optics, power distribution, and hardware troubleshooting.
• Strong working knowledge of data center electrical and mechanical systems. You understand rack power, PDUs, UPS systems, generators, cooling systems, environmental controls, and capacity limits.
• Built and operated infrastructure in colocation, cloud, AI infrastructure, high‑performance computing, or another mission‑critical environment.
• Managed contractors, vendors, remote‑hands teams, and facility partners. You set clear standards and hold partners accountable for quality, safety, schedule, and service levels.
• Owned hardware deployment and service workflows, including receiving, inventory, installation, validation, spare parts, repair, RMAs, and decommissioning.
• Strong operational judgment. You use change control, documented procedures, peer review, rollback plans, and clear escalation paths when working on live systems.
• Led complex incidents involving hardware, power, cooling, cabling, or facility systems.
• Written clear operating procedures, acceptance criteria, incident reports, and technical handoff documents.
• A willingness to work directly in data halls, travel regularly to Mount Thor sites, and participate in an on‑call rotation.

Bonus Skills

• Operated Apple Silicon or macOS hardware at data center scale.
• Built rack, power, cooling, cabling, or service workflows for hardware that was not originally designed for conventional data centers.
• Used Apple Configurator, DFU workflows, automated device recovery, or Mac hardware diagnostics.
• Opened new colocation sites or established a data center operations function from the ground up.
• Managed capacity and operations across several sites or hardware generations.
• Worked with DCIM, CMMS, asset-management, ticketing, or data center capacity‑planning systems.
• Supported data center fabrics, carrier circuits, cross‑connects, or multi‑site connectivity.
• Participated in facility commissioning, integrated systems testing, or critical‑environment readiness reviews.
• Built infrastructure that software agents can inspect and operate safely through structured data, clear permissions, validation, and human escalation.