Hands-On Data Center Hardware & Infra Leader

SpaceX; Hawthorne (CA); On-site; USD 165,000 - 240,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/dental/vision

401(k) plan

Stock options

Job summary

SpaceX in Hawthorne, CA, is seeking a hands-on Manager of Data Center Hardware & Infrastructure to build, lead, and scale a team responsible for design, deployment, and lifecycle management of data center hardware supporting mission-critical and enterprise environments.

The role emphasizes staying technical while hiring and mentoring a distributed team to deliver 24/7 reliability, manage hardware standards, and coordinate with network, security, and facilities.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a STEM discipline with 5+ years leading technical teams in data center, infrastructure, or IT operations roles.
• 8+ years hands-on experience in enterprise or hyperscale data center operations, hardware infrastructure, or critical facilities.

Responsibilities

• Build and lead a data center hardware team across sites.
• Own end-to-end hardware lifecycle: capacity planning, rack/stack, cabling, power, cooling, compute, storage, and networking.
• Establish and enforce hardware standards aligns with DISA STIG, NIST, ICD 705, and SpaceX security.
• Drive high-availability operations: monitoring, incident response, change management, preventive maintenance, rapid recovery.
• Collaborate with networks, security, facilities, and compute teams on design for new builds and expansions (modular and hyperscale).

Skills

Data center infra

Team leadership

GPU/AI compute

Hardware lifecycle

High-density design

DCIM & automation

Security/compliance

Education

Bachelor’s degree in STEM

Tools

VMware

NetApp storage

InfiniBand

Liquid cooling

Job description

SpaceX in Hawthorne, CA, is seeking a hands-on Manager of Data Center Hardware & Infrastructure to build, lead, and scale a team responsible for design, deployment, and lifecycle management of data center hardware supporting mission-critical and enterprise environments.

The role emphasizes staying technical while hiring and mentoring a distributed team to deliver 24/7 reliability, manage hardware standards, and coordinate with network, security, and facilities.