Engineering Manager, Data Center Operations

Cloudflare•San Francisco, CA

About The Position

Cloudflare is seeking an experienced Data Center Operations manager to build and lead a distributed team of Data Center Engineers supporting new data center sites across the United States. The role owns sites throughout their full lifecycle: delivering greenfield builds through third-party vendors and colocation partners, operating production sites, and securely decommissioning hardware. The manager is accountable for production hardware availability, 24x7 on-site response, and developing an operating model that can scale across the footprint. The role covers the physical infrastructure layer, including hardware, cabling, and Layer 1/Layer 2 connectivity. It works closely with network engineering and server provisioning teams, but does not own those teams. The manager balances build timelines and quality, partner performance and standards, and incident response and compliance. Regular travel to data center sites is expected, with more frequent travel during builds and periodic visits once sites reach steady state.

Requirements

At least 6 years of data center operations experience, including at least 3 years directly managing on-site technical teams; some experience must include leading geographically distributed teams.
Track record of operating multi-site data center fleets at hyperscale or large-cloud scale.
Hands-on experience with IT hardware, including servers, network devices, optics, and cabling, and sufficient technical depth to coach engineers and assess vendor and contractor work.
Experience owning sites across the full lifecycle, including greenfield data center or cage builds through third-party vendors, steady-state operations, and hardware decommissioning.
Experience managing providers in Tier III+ colocation facilities and holding them accountable to commitments.
Experience managing 24x7 on-call operations and incident escalation.
Strong Layer 1 and Layer 2 fundamentals, including structured cabling, fiber and optics, patching standards, switching basics, and troubleshooting physical connectivity for network and server hardware.
Solid knowledge of data center power and cooling, rack design, high-density deployments, and hardware lifecycle management.
Strong understanding of DCIM and asset-management systems, with a track record of maintaining accurate rack, power, cabling, and asset records from hardware arrival through decommissioning.
Working knowledge of security and compliance frameworks common in enterprise-grade data centers, sufficient to operate within them; auditor-level expertise is not required.
Strong program-management skills across multiple vendors, sites, and time-bound workstreams.
Track record of reducing toil through tooling or process redesign.
Excellent written and verbal communication, including business reviews and reporting on status, risks, and availability to leadership.
Ability to travel regularly to data center sites.

Nice To Haves

Experience establishing a new data center operations function or region from the ground up.
Background at a hyperscaler, cloud provider, major CDN, or similarly fast-scaling infrastructure company.
Experience with ITAD vendor programs and secure destruction requirements.
Experience with PagerDuty or similar on-call and incident tooling.
Familiarity with DCIM and source-of-truth tools such as NetBox or Nlyte, Jira-based operational workflows, and Confluence documentation practices.
Experience with remote-hands programs and vendor scorecards.
Background in hardware diagnostics, burn-in, or automated build validation.

Responsibilities

Hire, develop, and manage on-site Data Center Engineers across data centers in the United States; establish expectations, career paths, ownership, and a shared team culture.
Build and participate in a 24x7 on-call rotation; define coverage models, handover protocols, and incident SLAs as the footprint grows.
Serve as the escalation point for on-site incidents, coordinate engineers and external partners to restore service, and lead post-incident root-cause analysis.
Own site build timelines from readiness through hardware delivery, rack-and-stack, cabling, validation, and production handoff.
Run greenfield builds as multi-workstream programs, coordinating integrators, contractors, and colocation providers while maintaining quality and schedule.
Be on-site during key build phases to oversee vendor work, verify quality, and confirm production readiness.
Be accountable for production hardware availability; manage break/fix work, repairs, RMAs, and spares strategy, and measure and report availability.
Manage colocation providers and vendors, including escalations, remote-hands quality, power and cooling issues, and performance against contractual commitments.
Ensure sites are fully documented in DCIM from day one, including rack elevations, power, cabling, asset location, and lifecycle status; maintain accurate records as hardware arrives and throughout its lifecycle.
Partner with tooling teams to deploy DCIM at new sites and define documentation standards that scale.
Own on-site decommissioning, including unracking, physical collection, serial-number verification, chain of custody, and handoff for secure destruction.
Partner with vendor management on IT asset disposition providers and ensure destruction certificates and compliance evidence are filed and audit-ready.
Ensure sites and teams meet physical security, access-control, chain-of-custody, and compliance obligations; follow and help develop procedures, and support audits with timely evidence.
Identify repetitive manual work and influence tooling and automation teams to improve build, break/fix, decommissioning, and evidence-collection processes; evaluate AI-assisted workflows for operations and compliance.
Own weekly business reviews and monthly and quarterly reporting on availability, build progress, incidents, and operational health for the Director and peer leaders.
Partner with network, systems, hardware, supply chain, and infrastructure engineering teams so physical operations support the services running on the infrastructure.
Travel regularly to data center sites, more frequently during site builds and periodically after sites reach steady state.