Data Center Operations Technician (SiteOps)

River AI•San Francisco, CA

3d•Onsite

About The Position

River AI is seeking a hands-on Data Center Operations Technician to keep the infrastructure behind its AI systems running reliably. The role brings new equipment online safely, diagnoses and repairs hardware faults, and minimizes downtime across compute infrastructure. The technician owns day-to-day hardware operations, from receiving and installing equipment through troubleshooting failures and retiring systems, while working with infrastructure engineers and vendors to maintain a safe, organized, and reliable data center. This is an on-site position at an active data center in Palo Alto, California. The data center operates around the clock, and shifts may include nights, weekends, and holidays, with participation in an on-call rotation. Additional hours may be required during deployments or maintenance windows. Expected base pay is $30–$50 USD per hour, depending on experience and skills, plus equity.

Requirements

High school diploma or equivalent.
At least two years of experience in a data center or comparable mission-critical environment, including hardware, industrial, or manufacturing operations.
Hands-on experience troubleshooting and repairing server, storage, and network hardware.
Basic Linux skills, including connecting to servers over SSH and reading logs.
Working knowledge of rack installation, power cabling, and copper and fiber cabling.
A careful, methodical approach to safety, procedures, labeling, and verification.
A collaborative mindset, clear communication, and ownership of issues through resolution.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting liquid-cooled server racks.
Familiarity with NVIDIA GPU-based AI infrastructure, particularly B300 systems or GB300 NVL72 rack-scale platforms.
Experience deploying, maintaining, or troubleshooting hardware in AI-focused or hyperscale data centers.

Responsibilities

Monitor servers, network devices, and facility alerts.
Triage incidents and restore service quickly and safely.
Diagnose and replace failed components, including drives, memory, power supplies, fans, network interface cards, and optics.
Use Linux and SSH to inspect logs, investigate faults, and verify that repairs resolve the underlying issue.
Receive, stage, rack, cable, label, and power up servers, switches, and power distribution units, then coordinate handoff for provisioning.
Complete hardware repair and on-site support requests, including urgent incidents during on-call shifts.
Maintain spare-parts inventory and coordinate vendor repairs, warranty claims, and return merchandise authorizations.
Maintain accurate asset records from receipt through decommissioning, conduct physical inventory audits, and support secure hardware disposal.