Fleet Data Centers is a next-generation data center company purpose-built to meet the demands of today's high-performance workloads—AI, cloud, and hyperscale. As a startup backed by leading investors, Seawe are building the infrastructure of the future from the ground up. Our vision is bold, our team is growing, and we are looking for visionary leaders ready to scale with us.
The Role
As our Vice President of Data Center Operations, you will be responsible for building and leading all facets of data center operations—from physical infrastructure, critical systems uptime, and safety, to building and scaling high-performing teams. You will play a leading role in shaping our operational strategy, driving continuous improvement, and ensuring world-class service delivery for our customers.
This is a unique opportunity to architect and scale operations at a company that is redefining the data center model from the ground up.
What You Will Do
- Safety, security, and availability are the most important things we do. Deliver near-perfect operations on these three dimensions for Fleet, its employees, and its customers.
- Lead the end-to-end operational management of all data center sites, including facility management, maintenance, uptime monitoring, and physical security.
- Design and implement scalable operational processes and SOPs aligned with the best industry practices and compliance standards (e.g., Uptime Institute, ISO, NIST, SOC 2).
- Build and lead site operations teams including hiring, training, performance management, and leadership development.
- Develop and track KPIs for operational efficiency, capacity planning, energy usage, and uptime reliability. Operational efficiency to include year over year productivity and unit cost of labor improvements enabled by waste/rework reduction and automation business cases.
- Partner closely with Engineering, Real Estate, Construction, and Customer Success teams to ensure smooth handoffs and integrated planning.
- Design, build and scale Fleet's data center operations teams responsible for the maintenance and repair of data center mechanical and electrical plant, network deployment and cabling, physical security operations and contract guard force, local health, safety and environmental operation and the associated spares, warehouse, and logistics across each of those operations.
- Implement a preventative and predictive maintenance strategy to maximize uptime and asset life.
- Own operational risk management, disaster recovery, and incident response planning.
- Create a culture of safety, accountability, and continuous improvement.
- Stay ahead of industry trends, technologies, and customer requirements, influencing product and infrastructure strategy.
- Represent Fleet Data Centers in the community, engaging with local agencies (permitting), community leaders, community colleges and schools, and political leaders as required.
- Represent Fleet Data Centers with customers during planning and operations. Own build delays and failures and recovery plans. Own and represent data center outages to customers including event management, recovery, repair, and corrective actions. Clear-eyed, calm, and steadfast when dealing with catastrophic events and delivering unwelcome news in the wee hours of the morning.
What You Bring
- 12+ years of experience in data center operations or mission-critical infrastructure management, with 8+ years in a senior leadership role.
- Proven record of scaling operations in a high-growth or startup environment.
- Deep expertise in facility infrastructure systems (power, cooling, mechanical, electrical).
- Strong working knowledge of regulatory, environmental, and safety requirements for data center operations.
- Excellent leadership and team-building skills, with a hands-on, roll-up-your-sleeves mindset.
- Experience with budget management, vendor negotiations, and facilities contracts.
- Strategic thinker with the ability to translate high-level goals into detailed operational plans.
- Ability to travel to data center sites as needed.
- Experience with greenfield data center builds or early-stage site launches.
- Background in energy efficiency, sustainability, or alternative power systems.
- Familiarity with colocation, hyperscale, and/or edge computing environments.
- Require operational paranoia, unapologetically high standards, humility, grit, curiosity, trust-but-verify, embrace failures, and never make the same mistake twice.
Compensation & Benefits
·Fleet Data Centers offers a competitive compensation package including equity, full benefits, and the opportunity to be part of a category-defining company from the ground up.
oBase $300,000-$350,000
oBonus
oCarry eligible.
Location
Northern Virginia with consideration for applicants in Denver, CO, Austin, TX, or Seattle, WA (Mercer Island)
Fleet Data Centers Employment
Fleet Data Center employees enjoy competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits, including 100% employer-covered medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401K program, standard paid holidays, and unlimited PTO.
NOTE: This job description is not intended to be all-inclusive. Employees may perform other related duties as assigned to meet the organization"s ongoing needs.
Fleet Data Centers is proud to be an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants are considered for employment regardless of age, race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or veteran status. If you need assistance applying for any of our open positions, please contact us at info@fleetdatacenters.com.
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