Senior Manager of Critical Operations

About the Role

As Senior Manager of Critical Operations, you own the day-to-day performance of the operating portfolio. You are responsible for keeping critical infrastructure running, ensuring uptime, incident response, maintenance execution, and operational cost performance, and maintaining a consistent standard of operational discipline across the teams you lead. This is a hands-on operational leadership role for someone who can make timely, clear decisions under conflicting input. You will reconcile the day-to-day tensions of running critical facilities, engineering standards against operational reality, cost against reliability, maintenance strategy against uptime risk while keeping the site performing without constant escalation. When operational forces conflict at the site level, you make the call; you escalate only when trade-offs reach beyond operational scope.

You report to the Vice President of Critical Operations and partner closely with Operations Analytics, Security Operations, and Customer Delivery to keep the site aligned with both customer commitments and enterprise standards.

Location: Denver, CO (Hybrid/Remote)
Travel: Ability to travel up to 20% for company gatherings

Responsibilities

• Own site operational performance
  • Own uptime and reliability across all data centers, holding the operating portfolio to a consistent standard
  • Own maintenance execution and effectiveness, ensuring work is planned, prioritized, and completed to standard
  • Manage operational cost performance, balancing reliability and efficiency in day-to-day decisions
  • Maintain consistency of operational standards and practices across teams and shifts
• Lead incident command and resolution
  • Serve as incident commander for site events, driving timely response, resolution, and recovery
  • Coordinate cross-functional response during major events, keeping stakeholders informed and aligned
  • Capture lessons learned and drive corrective actions that reduce recurrence
• Make and own operational decisions
  • Act as the site-level decision-maker when operational forces conflict, deciding whether to follow or adapt established standards under real-world conditions
  • Apply analytics-driven recommendations in practice, and prioritize maintenance, reliability actions, and operational risk
  • Apply customer-driven constraints to operations where they affect site delivery, working through Customer Delivery to understand the commitment
  • Escalate to the Vice President of Critical Operations only when trade-offs materially affect enterprise strategy, financial exposure exceeds defined thresholds, or decisions extend beyond operational scope
• Lead and develop the team
  • Lead, coach, and develop site operations and maintenance teams, building trust with both technical and operational staff
  • Set clear expectations, manage performance, and build the bench strength needed for resilient 24/7 operations
  • Drive alignment across functions through consensus where feasible and with authority where required

How You'll Work With Other Functions

This role sits at the center of execution, where standards, insight, and customer commitments meet real-world operating conditions. Your effectiveness depends on a clear relationship with the functions around you:

• Vice President of Critical Operations
  • Align on operational priorities, performance targets, and resourcing for your site(s)
  • Escalate trade-offs that reach beyond operational scope, exceed financial thresholds, or affect enterprise strategy
  • Provide visibility into site performance, risks, and emerging operational issues
• Operations Engineering

  Operations Engineering owns the engineering standards, designs, and technical solutions the site is built and run on. You execute against those standards in live operating conditions and provide the feedback loop from the field, surfacing where a standard meets friction in practice, where reliability issues point to a design or engineering gap, and where real-world performance should inform the next iteration.

  Together: Operations Engineering sets the standard; you operate to it and tell them what the field is telling you.

• Operations Analytics

  Analytics defines the signal: the KPIs, models, and recommendations that describe how operations are performing. You use those outputs as primary inputs to operational decisions and decide how they are applied in practice. You also provide direction on the operational questions analytics should help answer.

  Together: Analytics defines the signal; you decide the response.

• Security Operations

  Security defines what is allowed; the access controls, posture, and constraints within which the site must operate. You execute within those constraints, provide input on feasibility and operational impact, and implement security controls under real-world operating conditions. You move fast within clearly defined boundaries.

• Customer Delivery

  Customer Delivery surfaces the customer commitments, SLA requirements, and risks the site is accountable for. You take those commitments into account in operational planning and execution, and flag where customer expectations may conflict with operational reality so they can be reconciled before they become issues.

Requirements

• 10+ years in critical facilities, data center, or mission-critical operations, including 4+ years leading operational teams
• Proven track record owning uptime, reliability, and maintenance outcomes in a 24/7 critical environment
• Strong incident command experience with the ability to lead calmly and decisively during high-pressure events
• Sound operational judgment, with the ability to balance standards and discipline against real-world execution and cost
• Ability to make timely, clear decisions under conflicting input without constant escalation
• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, with the ability to drive alignment through consensus and authority as the situation requires
• Preferred: familiarity with reliability modeling, maintenance optimization, and SOC/regulatory/customer security requirements; experience supporting hyperscale or power generation clients
• Education: Bachelor’s degree in engineering, Operations, or a related field; equivalent operational experience considered

What Success Looks Like

Success in this role is a site that performs reliably without constant escalation to executives. A high performer:

• Makes timely, clear decisions under conflicting input
• Maintains site performance and operational standards without constant escalation
• Drives alignment across functions, through consensus when feasible and with authority where required
• Balances discipline (standards) with pragmatism (real-world execution)
• Builds trust with both technical and operational teams
• Responds decisively to incidents and reduces recurrence over time

Benefits

• Hybrid working environment
• Team building and educational opportunities
• Generous benefits package including robust health benefits and a 401(k)-company contribution
• Unlimited PTO
• RTD ECO pass or parking reimbursement
• Competitive compensation, bonus, and an incentive plan

Pay

$150K–178K (Offers Bonus)