Vice President, Data Center Operations

5C Data Centers USA, Inc. • Springfield, OH

20d • Remote

About The Position

5C Data Centers is seeking a senior operations leader to own the performance, reliability, scalability, and operational readiness of its US hyperscale and AI data center portfolio. The role leads site operations, critical facilities, operational readiness, workforce planning, health and safety, maintenance, incident management, vendor performance, and continuous improvement across US sites. It partners with Construction, Commissioning, Engineering, Quality, and Cloud Operations to transition new facilities from construction into stable production operations.

The Vice President must be effective in live mission-critical environments and in a high-growth organization building facilities, teams, processes, and operational infrastructure. The role reports to the Senior Vice President, Operations. The position is remote in the USA and requires 20–40% travel, as well as executive escalation support outside normal hours.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Facilities Management, Operations, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• 12+ years of progressively responsible experience in data center operations or critical facilities, including 7+ years of senior leadership.
• Experience operating hyperscale, colocation, cloud, HPC, or AI/GPU data center environments.
• Proven experience leading operations across multiple data centers or a large-scale data center campus.
• Experience opening new data centers and transitioning them from construction and commissioning into production operations.
• Experience supporting customer-facing data center environments with demanding uptime, capacity, and service requirements.
• Hands-on experience operating liquid-cooled, high-density environments using direct-to-chip or similar cooling technologies.
• Ability to travel 20–40%.
• Ability to provide executive escalation support outside normal hours.

Responsibilities

• Provide executive leadership for operations across all US data center sites and establish a consistent operating model that accounts for site-specific infrastructure and customer requirements.
• Hold site leadership accountable, including Site Operations Directors, Chief Engineers, critical facilities teams, and data center technicians.
• Ensure 24x7 coverage and escalation capability, intervening when operational, staffing, reliability, or safety risks arise.
• Drive operational excellence across electrical distribution, switchgear, UPS, generators, mechanical and cooling systems, liquid cooling, BMS/EPMS, controls, and fire/life-safety systems.
• Establish preventive, predictive, and corrective maintenance programs, and enforce controls for maintenance, switching, change management, and work on or near critical infrastructure.
• Partner with Quality and ensure sites act on reliability findings through maintenance program changes, procedure updates, and corrective actions.
• Own operational requirements for AI, GPU, and HPC environments, including direct-to-chip liquid cooling, coolant quality, and leak detection and response.
• Align facility capacity, power, cooling, and readiness with Cloud Operations and deployment schedules.
• Serve as the operations executive for key customers at each site, owning SLA performance, escalations, and post-incident reviews.
• Lead operational readiness for new data centers and major capacity expansions through site critical facilities engineering teams.
• Ensure readiness plans cover staffing and training; SOPs, MOPs, and EOPs; maintenance programs and spare parts; and vendor support, access control, and escalation procedures.
• Establish formal turnover and acceptance criteria before facilities enter production, and ensure new-site engineering staff are hired and trained early enough to support readiness without competing with live operations.
• Build repeatable site-launch models to bring capacity online faster and more consistently.
• Maintain consistent standards across sites for procedures, preventive maintenance, change management, incident management, escalation, shift turnover, training, and qualification programs.
• Provide executive oversight during major events and outages and ensure root-cause analysis and corrective actions are completed.
• Lead the HSE function and champion a strong safety culture across all sites.
• Ensure compliance with electrical safety, lockout/tagout, energized work, contractor safety, and regulatory requirements.
• Partner with Security on physical security and access control, and support customer, insurance, and regulatory audits.
• Build scalable staffing models based on site capacity, infrastructure, and growth plans; partner with HR and Talent Acquisition on hiring forecasts and pipelines for critical roles.
• Coach and develop Site Operations Directors, the HSE leader, Chief Engineers, and other operational leaders; build succession plans and a culture of accountability, technical discipline, and continuous learning.
• Develop and manage operating budgets, and partner with Finance on plans, forecasts, headcount, and capital.
• Set service-level expectations for critical vendors and monitor their performance, cost, and safety.
• Translate business growth into requirements for power, cooling, space, staffing, and maintenance.
• Establish operational KPIs and executive reporting for availability, critical incidents, MTTR, preventive maintenance completion, repeat failures, safety performance, training completion, operating expenses, energy efficiency, and site-readiness milestones.
• Use performance data to identify trends, address root causes, and standardize improvements across sites.

Benefits

• Competitive pay.
• Career growth in a fast-growing industry.
• Opportunity to contribute to infrastructure supporting AI and high-performance computing.
• Entrepreneurial culture that empowers employees to help shape the company's future.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Executive