Want to know if this job is worth applying to?
Denver, Colorado, United States
Onsite
Vantage Data Centers powers, cools, protects and connects the technology of the world’s well-known hyperscalers, cloud providers and large enterprises. Developing and operating across North America, EMEA and Asia Pacific, Vantage has evolved data center design in innovative ways to deliver dramatic gains in reliability, efficiency and sustainability in flexible environments that can scale as quickly as the market demands.
Position Overview
We are creating a new senior leadership role to build and lead Vantage’s fleetwide reliability and technical assurance capability. The function provides a stronger central mechanism for understanding reliability risk, validating critical controls, learning from incidents, and converting those lessons into durable improvements across the operating fleet. Its purpose is to set, govern, and assure global operations standards, performance, and risk across the portfolio.
The function owns portfolio-wide operational standards, governance, performance visibility, and operational risk. It provides a common framework for measuring operational performance, identifying systemic risks and trends, and driving consistency, accountability, and continuous improvement across regions while preserving regional ownership of day-to-day operations.
The role complements regional Operations and Reliability Engineering teams, who remain accountable for live site operations, incident command, maintenance, and customer operational delivery. It provides central assurance, expert challenge, practical support, cross-region learning, and a structured route to escalate systemic risks and investment needs to the Executive Leadership Team.
The orienting lens is customer impact. Across a large and varied operating fleet, the function applies proportionate, risk-based assurance — concentrating effort where customer commitments and operating reputation are most material, rather than uniformly across technical risk.
This is a build mandate. The successful candidate will shape the function from the ground up with executive sponsorship, formal authority within its remit, owned budget for a focused direct team, and direct visibility to the Executive Leadership Team.
This role will ideally be based in Denver, Colorado or London, England.
Essential Job Functions
Establish the fleetwide reliability baseline and risk model. Build the common reliability and resilience baseline. Define a risk-ranking method that leads with customer-impacting risk. Stand up the recurring assurance cycle and the evidence model for critical controls.
Lead technical assurance, inspection, and critical control verification. Lead high-consequence independent reviews and field verification across electrical, mechanical, controls, automation, emergency response, and commissioning.
Drive corrective action and closed-loop learning. Translate incidents, near misses, and weak signals into structured learning. Maintain a risk-ranked corrective action register. Ensure validated lessons feed into the standards, procedures, telemetry, supplier requirements, training, and capital plans that apply across the fleet.
Foster transparent reporting and accountable learning. Build an environment in which honest errors, near misses, and weak signals are surfaced early, and frontline teams are treated as a primary source of operational intelligence.
Develop the roadmap for configuration and automation drift detection. Partner with Product, Automation, IT, and Cybersecurity on requirements for telemetry, alarm quality, configuration management, and AI-enabled drift detection. As capability matures, AI-enabled tooling may help identify anomalies, drift, and candidate corrective actions for review.
Establish executive reporting and governance. Set the operating cadence with Operations. Prepare concise monthly executive reporting that drives decisions, not reporting theater. Provide portfolio-level visibility into operational performance, risk, and trends through standardized metrics and reporting frameworks. Distinguish site execution issues from systemic patterns, standards gaps, supplier issues, and investment constraints.
Set and govern global operational standards, performance, and risk. Own the global operational standards framework and associated policies. Establish portfolio-wide KPIs, metrics, and reporting frameworks that provide clear visibility into operational performance, reliability risk, and emerging trends. Roll up fleetwide performance and risk into executive-level insights that distinguish local execution issues from systemic patterns. Audit compliance with standards, identify systemic gaps and portfolio-wide improvement opportunities, and drive consistency, governance, accountability, and continuous improvement across regions.
Build and lead the function. Hold owned budget and the authority to build a focused direct team, operating through a wider cross-functional assurance network rather than a parallel organization. Exercise formal authority within the remit — require evidence, set assurance scope and cadence, conduct reviews and inspections, own the central corrective action register, require management responses, and require deviations from critical controls to be explicit, risk-ranked, time-bound, approved, and visible — escalating findings directly to the Executive Leadership Team, in partnership with regional teams.
Additional Duties as assigned by Management.
Job Requirements
• 15+ years in mission-critical operations, reliability engineering, operational assurance, critical facilities, industrial operations, process safety, or another high-reliability environment.
• Demonstrated experience leading reliability, technical assurance, operational excellence, engineering assurance, or risk-based inspection across a complex operating fleet.
• Strong working understanding of mission-critical electrical, mechanical, controls, automation, commissioning, maintenance, and operating procedure environments.
• Experience investigating incidents, near misses, recurring defects, or systemic reliability issues and converting findings into practical corrective actions.
• Experience building governance or assurance systems that drive operational improvement rather than reporting alone.
• Credible field presence: comfortable with site walks, control rooms, methods of procedure, maintenance realities, and difficult technical conversations — not solely an executive-reporting leader.
• The ability to operate through influence in a matrixed environment, with the credibility to challenge senior regional, operations, engineering, and technical leaders while maintaining trust and partnership.
• Executive-level communication: concise risk narratives, decision-ready papers, and credibility with a senior executive audience.
• Global Travel required is expected to be up to 30%-40% but may increase over time as the business evolves.
Preferred
• Hyperscale data center or colocation operations experience.
• Experience in adjacent high-reliability sectors — utilities, power generation, aviation, semiconductor manufacturing, oil and gas, nuclear, pharmaceuticals, or advanced manufacturing.
• Familiarity with operational technology, BMS and SCADA, alarm quality, configuration management, and telemetry.
• Experience building or scaling a new function in a high-growth environment.
• Professional engineering qualification or equivalent technical credibility.
Why This Matters
This is an unusual platform: a function created from the ground up, with executive sponsorship, formal authority within its remit, and direct impact on customer outcomes and operating reputation. The role will establish the operating system that governs standards, performance visibility, and operational risk across a rapidly growing global portfolio, reinforcing Vantage’s values of trust, accountability, respect, and agility.
Physical Demands and Special Requirements
The physical demands described here are representative of those that must be met by an employee to successfully perform the essential functions of this job. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
While performing the duties of this job, the employee is occasionally required to stand; walk; sit; use hands to handle or feel objects; reach with hands and arms; climb stairs; balance; stoop or kneel; talk and hear. The employee must occasionally lift and/or move up to 25 pounds.
Additional Details
• Salary Range: $250,000-$270,000 Base + Bonus (this range is based on Colorado market data and may vary in other locations)
• This position is eligible for company benefits including but not limited to medical, dental, and vision coverage, life and AD&D, short and long-term disability coverage, paid time off, employee assistance, participation in a 401k program that includes company match, and many other additional voluntary benefits.
• Compensation for the role will depend on a number of factors, including your qualifications, skills, competencies, and experience and may fall outside of the range shown.
We operate with No Ego and No Arrogance. We work to build each other up and support one another, appreciating each other’s strengths and respecting each other’s weaknesses. We find joy in our work and each other, actively seeking opportunities to inject fun into what we do. Our hard and efficient work is rewarded with an above market total compensation package. We offer a comprehensive suite of health and welfare, retirement, and paid leave benefits exceeding local expectations.
Throughout the year, the advantage of being part of the Vantage team is evident with an array of benefits, recognition, training and development, and the knowledge that your contribution adds value to the company and our community.
Don't meet all the requirements? Please still apply if you think you are the right person for the position. We are always keen to speak to people who connect with our mission and values.
Vantage Data Centers is an Equal Opportunity Employer
Vantage Data Centers does not accept unsolicited resumes from search firm agencies. Fees will not be paid in the event a candidate submitted by a recruiter without an agreement in place is hired; such resumes will be deemed the sole property of Vantage Data Centers.