Director, Memphis Power Plant Operations

Southaven, MS

SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today, SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of making life multiplanetary and expanding consciousness to the stars.
SpaceXSI is building Super Intelligence to help humanity understand the universe. Our teams are building the full Super Intelligence stack: from our Colossus supercomputers, to Grok models, to our suite of applications, including Grok Bot, Grok Build, Grok Imagine, Grok Voice, and X. We're creating a powerful flywheel where more compute trains better models, better models power more useful products, and what we learn from people using those products shapes what we build next.

The Director, Memphis Power Plant Operations provides strategic and operational leadership for the gas turbine power generation facility supporting SpaceXSI's Colossus data center campus in Memphis, Tennessee. This role oversees all plant operations, maintenance, commissioning, and continued construction/expansion of the dedicated power plant, with full ownership of delivering reliable, high-availability electrical power to the Colossus AI training clusters. The position is responsible for driving operational excellence, ensuring 24/7 power reliability and quality, safety, environmental compliance, and leading cross-functional teams to achieve aggressive scale-up, availability, cost, and schedule objectives in a high-growth, fast-paced environment.

• Provide strategic and operational leadership for the Memphis gas turbine power plant, including 24/7 operations, maintenance, commissioning, and ongoing construction and capacity expansion
• Own end-to-end delivery of electrical power to the Colossus data center sites, ensuring industry-leading reliability, availability, power quality, and redundancy
• Lead multidisciplinary teams of operators, maintenance technicians, engineers, contractors, and support staff in a 24/7 operational and construction environment
• Oversee plant performance, commissioning, testing, and seamless integration with data center electrical infrastructure and load
• Develop and execute comprehensive operations and maintenance strategies, including preventative/predictive maintenance, outage planning, hot gas path management, and OEM coordination for gas turbines, generators, balance of plant, and high-voltage electrical systems
• Manage concurrent construction, equipment installation, civil works, and phased capacity expansions while maintaining safe, reliable operation of the existing plant
• Ensure full compliance with environmental, safety, and regulatory requirements, including air permits, emissions controls, TDEC, EPA, OSHA, and local authorities
• Partner closely with SpaceXSI data center operations, engineering, fuel suppliers, OEMs, utilities, and regulatory agencies
• Formulate and execute operating budgets, fuel management, O&M, capital projects, and annual operating plans
• Drive continuous improvement in plant availability, heat rate, emissions, cost, safety metrics, and operational processes
• Establish and promote a culture of uncompromising safety, accountability, operational excellence, rapid execution, and collaboration
• Serve as the site leader and primary representative to the Memphis community, regulators, and stakeholders
• Recruit, develop, coach, and retain high-performing talent; manage staffing, resource allocation, and contractor oversight for both operations and construction

• Bachelor’s degree in mechanical, electrical, or other engineering discipline
• 8+ years of experience in power generation operations, plant management, or related industrial or aerospace operations
• 5+ years of leadership experience managing teams of operators, technicians, and engineers
• Experience operating or managing gas turbine power plants (simple cycle or combined cycle)

• Experience managing large-scale gas turbine facilities (100 MW+), preferably with high-availability critical power applications (data centers, industrial, or similar)
• Proven track record of achieving and sustaining high plant availability, reliability, and low forced outage rates
• Hands-on experience with plant construction, commissioning, start-up, and concurrent operations/expansion of gas turbine facilities
• Deep knowledge of gas turbine technology…