Staff Principal Data Center Operations and Maintenance Engineer

Designworks Talent

Bellevue, US

Hybrid

Who this role is best for

Aimed at mid-to-senior level infrastructure professionals who can build and scale operations in a fast-evolving AI data center environment.

Best fit for

Candidates with hands-on experience in GPU or large-scale compute environments and a background in incident response
— “Experience in a data center operations, site reliability, or infrastructure operations role, ideally supporting GPU or large-scale compute environments.”
Individuals who have led or driven operational maturity in early-stage organizations
— “Comfortable working in an early-stage environment where processes and tooling are still being established.”
Professionals with a track record of creating monitoring, alerting, and operational tooling for mission-critical systems
— “Collaborate with the engineering teams to make sure monitoring, alerting, and operational tooling are first class.”

Things to consider

Requires in-office presence for three days per week in Bellevue, WA, despite being a hybrid role
— “Approximately three days per week in the office.”
U.S. work authorization is mandatory, as visa sponsorship is not available
— “U.S. work authorization is required. Visa sponsorship is not currently available.”

How to stand out

Highlight experience in post-launch monitoring and incident resolution for large-scale infrastructure
— “Lead or support incident response for production issues, driving toward fast, effective resolution.”
Emphasize contributions to operational tooling and runbooks in previous roles
— “Contribute to runbooks, on-call practices, and operational maturity as the platform scales.”
Showcase cross-functional collaboration with hardware, networking, and infrastructure teams
— “Partner with hardware, networking, orchestration, and infrastructure teams to resolve root causes and prevent recurrence.”

Pace · SteadyCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

high reliability and customer experience
establishing operational discipline

Typical background

data center operationsinfrastructure operations

Skills & requirements

Required

Data Center OperationsIncident ResponseMonitoringTroubleshootingCollaboration

Preferred

On-call/incident-management ToolingGPU Cluster Operations

About the role

Original posting from Designworks Talent via Ashby

STAFF OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE ENGINEER
Location: Hybrid | Bellevue, WA (downtown)
Titles: Senior, Staff and Principal (multiple roles available)
SUPPORT OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE FOR A NEXT-GENERATION AI INFRASTRUCTURE FIRM
ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITY
A well-funded, rapidly growing AI infrastructure company is building a next-generation cloud platform designed to power the full lifecycle of artificial intelligence. The organization is developing a comprehensive AI infrastructure, platform, and services portfolio that supports the full spectrum of AI workloads—including large-scale compute, model training, fine-tuning, inference, and emerging agentic AI applications.
Backed by significant long-term investment, the company combines the speed, ownership, and innovation of a startup with the stability and resources of an established parent organization. Engineering teams are intentionally lean, highly collaborative, and AI-native, leveraging automation and modern tooling to operate world-class infrastructure at scale.
As AI data centers come online across North America, the company is building its Operations & Maintenance organization. We're seeking experienced operational team members who have built and scaled production infrastructure organizations and can establish the people, processes, tooling, and operational discipline required to deliver exceptional reliability and customer experience.
THE OPPORTUNITY
This is an individual contributor role responsible for helping to build and scale the Operations & Maintenance function supporting mission-critical AI infrastructure. The focus of these roles will be to support post-launch monitoring, incident response, reliability and provide exceptional customer support.
You will partner closely with Engineering, Infrastructure, Networking, Hardware, and Operations and Maintenance leadership to create a highly reliable, scalable operating system capable of supporting one of the industry's most advanced AI infrastructure platforms.
WHAT YOU'LL DO
Monitor live data center and GPU infrastructure for performance, capacity, and reliability issues.
Lead or support incident response for production issues, driving toward fast, effective resolution.
Collaborate with the engineering teams to make sure monitoring, alerting, and operational tooling are first class and make issues are caught before they impact customers.
Partner with hardware, networking, orchestration, and infrastructure teams to resolve root causes and prevent recurrence.
Contribute to runbooks, on-call practices, and operational maturity as the platform scales.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
Experience in a data center operations, site reliability, or infrastructure operations role, ideally supporting GPU or large-scale compute environments.
Strong incident response and troubleshooting skills across hardware, networking, and systems layers.
Comfortable working in an early-stage environment where processes and tooling are still being established.
Experience in multiple technical environments is a plus.
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
Experience with on-call/incident-management tooling (e.g., PagerDuty, Opsgenie) and monitoring stacks (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog).
Background supporting GPU cluster or data center operations post-launch.
COMPENSATION
Competitive base pay for Bellevue market
Certain roles are eligible for additional rewards, including merit increases, annual bonus, and long term incentives. These awards are allocated based on individual performance
U.S. based employees have access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan and company match, employees also receive per calendar year, paid holidays.
LOCATION
Hybrid role based in the Bellevue, WA area.
Approximately three days per week in the office.
U.S. work authorization is required. Visa sponsorship is not currently available.
WHY JOIN?
Build the Operations & Maintenance organization, processes, tooling and systems from its earliest stages.
Influence the strategy, processes, tooling, and culture supporting next-generation AI infrastructure.
Work alongside experienced engineers and engineering leaders solving some of the industry's most complex infrastructure challenges.
Join a company combining startup agility with substantial long-term investment and stability.
Play a foundational role in scaling the infrastructure powering tomorrow's AI applications.

Source: Designworks Talent careers (Ashby)