Data Center Operations Manager
This role leads day-to-day and strategic operations of mission-critical data center facilities supporting AI infrastructure, managing teams of technicians and overseeing mechanical, electrical, and cooling systems across one or multiple sites. It distinguishes itself from hands-on technician roles through its focus on regional or multi-site leadership, vendor management, preventive maintenance programs, and executive-level performance accountability for uptime and reliability. These managers sit within larger infrastructure operations teams at hyperscale AI cloud providers, partnering closely with hardware engineering, construction, and capacity planning functions to ensure facilities reliably support dense GPU and compute deployments at scale.
Measured across 65 of 65 open postings.
This role is advertised at 2 levels, so a single figure for the role would describe none of them. Experience and pay are the midpoints for each level on its own.
| Level | Share | Median years | Median pay |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior | 15%(10) | 8 | — |
| Manager | 48%(31) | 5 | — |
A dash means too few postings stated it to report a midpoint. Most companies do not publish a salary band, so pay is indicative rather than a market rate. 4 levels with fewer than 10 open postings are not shown.
“Data analysis skills (Python, SQL, or similar) for performance trending and optimization”
Requirements are a share of every open posting, so a role missing from this list is one where almost nobody asks. Work mode is different: many postings never say, so that figure counts only the ones that do. A posting stops being advertised when it is filled, cancelled or reorganised, so read the last figure as how long these stay on the market, not as time to hire.
Skills
What companies are looking for in this role.
Critical facility operations
Process design and improvement
Incident response and reliability
Supplier and vendor management
Equipment maintenance and calibration
Data centre hardware operations
Health, safety and environmental programs
Operational metrics and analytics
Infrastructure automation and IaC
Technical issue diagnosis
Escalation and incident response
Inventory and warehouse operations
Monitoring and observability
Regulatory compliance and document control
Program and project management
Network engineering and operations
Budget control and financial modeling
AI and GPU infrastructure operations
High-density AI infrastructure delivery
Technical team leadership and mentoring
Technical documentation
Technology
The tools and technologies that define this role.
Open Jobs
65 open Data Center Operations Manager jobs across 14 companies.
Other Business Operations roles
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