Sr. Manager, Data Center Engineering

Company Overview

Linked In is the world’s largest professional network, built to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Our products help people make powerful connections, discover exciting opportunities, build necessary skills, and gain valuable insights every day. We’re also committed to providing transformational opportunities for our own employees by investing in their growth. We aspire to create a culture that’s built on trust, care, inclusion, and fun – where everyone can succeed.

Data Center Engineering is the process of designing, building, and maintaining data centers, which are facilities used to house and manage critical IT infrastructure, applications, and data. Data center engineers ensure the data center infrastructure's stability, reliability, and security. They are crucial in supporting the availability and performance of applications and services. This involves the design, construction, operations, and maintenance of the physical infrastructure of a data center, including server, switching, and associated hardware.

The Senior Manager of Data Center Operations will lead a team of engineers to maintain the operational health, reliability, and hardware lifecycle management across Linked In’s data center environment. This leader will own day‑to‑day operations, technician workflows, incident response, vendor execution, and standards that ensure our data centers deliver industry‑leading uptime and performance.

A successful candidate will oversee teams responsible for hardware deployment, break/fix, server installation, cabling, staging, audits, preventive maintenance, and on‑site operational excellence. This leader will also drive KPI‑based improvements, operational consistency across sites, and scalable processes that support accelerating compute demand.

At Linked In, our approach to flexible work is centered on trust and optimized for culture, connection, clarity, and the evolving needs of our business. The work location of this role is hybrid, meaning it will be performed both from home and from a Linked In office on select days, as determined by the business needs of the team.

This role will can be based in one of our data center locations:
Santa Clara (CA), Hillsboro (OR), Richardson (TX), Manassas (VA).

• Own 24x7 operational reliability, infrastructure uptime, and incident management across assigned data center regions.
• Lead onsite operations teams overseeing hardware repair, deployment, installation, decommissioning, and preventive maintenance.
• Ensure all activities maintain compliance with safety protocols, operational standards, and risk mitigation procedures.
• Build and enforce operational runbooks, staffing plans, playbooks, and escalation paths to minimize MTTR and maximize SLA adherence.
• Manage the end‑to‑end project lifecycle, including planning, design, construction, commissioning, and handover.
• Develop, refine, and enforce standardized operating procedures across multiple data center locations.
• Use KPIs (availability, SLA adherence, backlog burn‑down, staffing coverage, MTTR, audit pass rates) to drive operational performance.
• Coordinate global compliance efforts for SOX, SOC2, ISO 27001, safety audits, and quality inspections.
• Lead cross‑functional collaboration with Engineering, Network, SRE, Security, and Program Management to ensure smooth execution of maintenance and install windows.
• Manage on‑site vendors and contingent workforce responsible for staffing, installs, cabling, and break/fix operations.
• Own performance management of vendor SLAs, quality, safety, and productivity metrics.
• Build strong relationships with OEMs, service providers, and cross‑functional internal stakeholders.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a high‑performance team of data center technicians, supervisors, and operations leads.
• Create a culture of accountability, safety, operational rigor, and continuous improvement.
• Invest in training programs, career development pathways, and skill certification for the operations workforce.
• Collaborate with cross‑functional teams, including hardware, networking, security, operations, and customer service, to ensure…