Engineering Manager, Data Center Operations
Hybrid · Atlanta · Austin, TX · Denver · New York, NY · San Francisco · Seattle, WA · Washington, DC · 3+ years experience · Posted Oct 19, 2026
At a glance
- Experience
- 3+ years experience
- Location
- Hybrid · Atlanta · Austin, TX · Denver · New York, NY · San Francisco · Seattle, WA · Washington, DC
About Cloudflare
- At Cloudflare, we are on a mission to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the world’s largest networks that powers millions of websites and other Internet properties for customers ranging from individual bloggers to SMBs to Fortune 500 companies. Cloudflare protects and accelerates any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare all have web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Cultures list and ranked among the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.
- At Cloudflare, we’re not looking for people who wait for a polished roadmap; we’re looking for the builders who see the cracks in the Internet that everyone else has simply learned to live with. We value candidates who have the instinct to spot a "normalized" problem and the AI-native curiosity to create a solution using the latest tools. Our culture is built on iteration, leveraging AI to ship faster today to make it better tomorrow, while ensuring that every improvement, no matter how small, is shared across the team to lift everyone up. If you’re the type of person who values curiosity over bureaucracy, and that AI is a partner in solving tough problems to keep the Internet moving forward, you’ll fit right in.
About the role
- Cloudflare is seeking an experienced Data Center Operations manager to build and run the team that brings new sites online and keeps them running around the clock.
- You will build a distributed team of Data Center Engineers from the ground up, owning sites across their full lifecycle from greenfield builds through retirement.
Responsibilities
- Hire, develop and manage Data Center Engineers based on-site at data centers across the US.
- Build and take part in a 24x7 on-call rotation with your team, defining coverage models, handover protocols, and incident SLAs.
- Serve as the escalation point for on-site incidents, coordinating engineers, providers, and vendors to restore service quickly and lead root-cause analysis.
- Own build timelines from site readiness through hardware delivery, rack-and-stack, cabling, validation, and handoff to production.
- Run greenfield builds as multi-workstream programs, coordinating third-party integrators, contractors, and colocation providers.
- Be on-site during key build phases to oversee vendor work, verify quality, and ensure sites are production-ready.
- Be accountable for availability targets for production hardware at your sites, running break/fix, repairs, RMAs, and spares strategy.
- Manage colocation providers and vendors day to day, handling escalations, remote-hands quality, power and cooling issues, and performance against contractual commitments.
- Ensure every site is fully documented in DCIM from day one, covering rack elevations, power, cabling, asset location, and lifecycle status.
- Own on-site decommissioning end to end, including unracking, physical collections, serial number verification, chain of custody, and handoff for secure destruction.
Requirements
- 6+ years in data center operations, including 3+ years directly managing on-site technical teams
- A 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
- Experience owning sites across the full lifecycle: delivering greenfield data center or cage builds through third-party vendors, running them in steady state, and decommissioning hardware
- 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: 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 keeping documentation accurate from day one
- Strong program management skills across multiple vendors, sites, and time-bound workstreams
Preferred qualifications
- Experience standing up a new data center operations function or region from zero
- 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 tooling 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
Workplace
- Ability to travel regularly to data center sites, with more frequent travel during site builds
Skills
- DCIM
- NetBox
- Nlyte
- Jira
- Confluence
- PagerDuty
- Structured Cabling
- Fiber And Optics
