Manager, R&D Data Center

Manager, R&D Data Center

Location:

Wheat ridge, CO, United States.

This is an incredible opportunity to be part of a company that has been at the forefront of AI and high‑performance data storage innovation for over two decades. DDN Storage powers many of the world’s most demanding AI data centers across industries such as life sciences, healthcare, financial services, autonomous vehicles, government, academia, research, and manufacturing.

Our global leader status in AI and multi‑cloud data management at scale empowers organizations to accelerate AI workloads and extract maximum value from their data. With a proven track record of performance, reliability, and scalability, DDN Storage enables businesses to tackle challenging AI and data‑intensive workloads with confidence.

DDN is seeking a Datacenter Operations Manager to lead a team of data center engineers in operating and maintaining a high‑performance, stakeholder‑focused Datacenter Lab. Reporting to the VP of Engineering, the role is responsible for all aspects of datacenter operations, primarily supporting internal engineering hardware and software development initiatives. The ideal candidate ensures operational excellence, reliability, and efficiency while fostering a proactive, team‑oriented environment.

• Lead a team of Data Center Engineers and oversee QA and R&D operations, including racking and stacking hardware, system setup, and QA execution assistance.
• Oversee data center operations and physical infrastructure, driving uptime, operational excellence, and team performance.
• Manage capacity planning and resource allocation for power, cooling, and rack space to support current and future hardware deployments.
• Manage and maintain laboratory budgets, operational metrics, and comprehensive inventory tracking across all DDN lab environments.
• Oversee Atlassian platform administration, including oversight of administrators and associated platform billing.
• Implement and maintain operational standards and best practices, including incident management, change management, and disaster recovery procedures.
• Monitor and report on operational performance, track KPIs, and present metrics to leadership to ensure continuous improvement and adherence to SLAs.
• Collaborate with internal engineering and cross‑functional teams to support development, testing, and deployment of hardware and software while maintaining a high‑performance, secure datacenter environment.
• Own resource allocation and project workflow for direct reports and contractor workforce, driving design and engineering decisions to conclusion and managing internal and external resources, project teams, contractors, and vendors.

• 8+ years of management experience (10+ preferred) and 5+ years of hands‑on technical experience relevant to data center activities.
• Ability to work closely with facilities engineers and possess in‑depth knowledge of data center infrastructure, including power distribution, cooling systems, rack and cable management, and environmental monitoring.
• Skill in assessing infrastructure requirements for hardware deployments, supporting capacity planning, troubleshooting power or cooling issues, and collaborating with facilities teams to ensure optimal uptime and reliability.
• Experience with computer networking, hyper‑converged platforms (Compute & Storage), file & block storage systems, and configuration of NFS, SMB, iSCSI, FC storage networks, VMware & Hyper‑V hypervisors, cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure), Dev Ops tools, GPU platforms, and AI/ML.
• Experience driving the design and refactoring of data center applications implemented in Python, Perl, PHP, and SQL.
• Experience designing and generating reports, data ingestion, and making customer data bundles available for engineering leadership.
• Experience scaling data center infrastructure to accommodate a rapidly growing engineering organization.
• Proven experience managing service expansion, data center moves, and extension to co‑located operations; hands‑on experience with networking topology design and router/switch programming configurations.
• Experience leading, staffing, and building a…