{"id":649551,"url":"https://alion.io/job/nscale-senior-manager-data-centre-vendor-operations-governance","title":"Senior Manager, Data Centre Vendor Operations & Governance","company":{"id":48155,"name":"Nscale","domain":"nscale.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/nscale","size_band":"501-1000","is_staffing_agency":false,"is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":93,"open_postings":45,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.267,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":56,"computed_at":"2026-09-24T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Management","role_family":"Management","seniority":"lead","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["London, United Kingdom"],"countries":["GB"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":53000,"max_usd":120000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":106},"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"CAPA","optional":false},{"name":"ISO 27001","optional":false},{"name":"SLI/SLO/SLA","optional":false},{"name":"SOC 2","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-17T14:50:18Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-21","last_verified_at":"2026-09-24T23:07:04Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":38,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":38},"description":"Senior Manager, Data Centre Vendor Operations & Governance (EMEA) - London base preferred (Hybrid); regular site travel, up to ~25% incl. international\n\nAbout Nscale\nNscale is the vertically integrated AI cloud engineered for AI. We own and operate the full stack - energy, data centres, GPU superclusters, orchestration, and AI services - delivering high-performance infrastructure to AI-native companies, enterprises, and governments across Europe and the US. We are deploying GPU capacity at hyperscale, operating some of the densest, most advanced AI infrastructure in the world.\nAt Nscale, our Support and Operations team plays a critical role in maintaining service availability, driving service reliability, and delivering rapid response to customer issues. We thrive on a culture of relentless innovation, ownership, and accountability, where every team member takes pride in their work and drives it with excellence and urgency. As an Nscaler, you'll build trust through openness and transparency, where everyone is inspired to do their best work. If you join our team, you'll be contributing to building the technology that powers the future.\nRole Purpose\nThe Senior Manager, Data Centre Vendor Operations & Governance owns the relationship, governance, and performance oversight of Nscale's colocation and 3rd party data centre providers across EMEA. This role is the single point of accountability for how Nscale partners with its EMEA vendors - ensuring sites are run to standard, changes and incidents are managed smoothly, and vendor performance is tracked and reported consistently across the estate.\nThis is a pioneering, build role: the successful candidate will establish this function from a single-person operation into a regionally structured team as Nscale's EMEA footprint grows. The role governs the accountability, cadence, and commercial/relationship dimension of vendor management; deep technical facility engineering (M&E design, thermal/cooling engineering, technical audit execution) is provided by Nscale's Reliability Engineering function, with this role commissioning, coordinating, and holding that work to schedule rather than performing it directly.\nKey Responsibilities\n1. Vendor Governance & Relationship Management\nOwn the strategic relationship with each 3rd party DC vendor across EMEA, acting as primary escalation point for vendor performance, site-level disputes, and contractual issues.\nEstablish, track, and enforce SLAs/OLAs covering power availability, environmental tolerances, security, and remote-hands responsiveness - working with Procurement/Legal to ensure contracts specify measurable, enforceable terms.\nOwn commercial escalation for SLA credits and Master Services Agreement (MSA) compliance.\nDesign, arrange, and lead Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) and monthly operational syncs with vendor leadership.\nBuild and maintain strong working relationships with vendor account teams and senior stakeholders, balancing collaborative partnership with the ability to hold vendors firmly to account.\n2. Internal Partnership & Governance\nPartner closely with Reliability Engineering, who provide technical sign-off on vendor-side changes and execute deep technical facility audits (cooling plant, BMS, power systems, environmental compliance) - this role owns the audit cadence and governs closure, RE owns the technical execution.\nPartner with site/GPU operations teams to align vendor change and incident processes with operational scheduling and workload demands.\nChair a joint governance forum with internal stakeholders to review vendor performance, escalations, and process friction.\nOwn the Annual Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) Planner - tracking provider-side maintenance schedules and ensuring they're mapped against Nscale's operational cycles well in advance, in partnership with Reliability Engineering and site operations.\n3. Change, Incident & Compliance Management\nOwn vendor-facing coordination of change requests, ensuring technical approval (Reliability Engineering) and scheduling inputs are properly sequenced.\nAct as the vendor-facing point of contact during incidents, ensuring the right internal teams are engaged and vendors are held to response commitments.\nDrive Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and Corrective and Preventive Action (CAPA) processes to full closure, mobilising Reliability Engineering and other internal SMEs for technical deep-dives, and challenging supplier findings where necessary.\nEnsure providers maintain robust Method of Procedure (MOP) / Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) documentation for scheduled maintenance, reviewable by Nscale to guarantee zero impact on live AI workloads.\nVerify ongoing provider compliance against industry baselines (e.g. ISO 27001, SOC 2 Type II) and relevant local environmental/sustainability mandates, in partnership with Reliability Engineering on the technical detail.\n4. Reporting, Capacity & Future Planning\nReview vendor-supplied reporting - including power/cooling telemetry (PUE, environmental conditions, active power draw) - through an operational and risk lens; technical interpretation supported by Reliability Engineering.\nFeed consolidated, quality-assured vendor data into Nscale's wider executive reporting programme.\nPartner with Capacity Planning and Deployment teams to align vendor space, power delivery schedules, and fit-out timelines with incoming GPU fleet arrivals.\nBuild the future shape of the function as the EMEA estate grows - defining when and how the team splits regionally, and building the business case for further headcount.\nWhat We Are Looking For\nEssential\n Exceptional relationship management skills - a proven ability to build, nurture, and maintain trust and deep partnerships with both external suppliers and internal teams, while keeping everyone aligned and accountable. This is the single most important capability for this role.\nExtensive experience in a customer-facing or stakeholder-management role - a natural communicator, empathetic, diplomatic, and comfortable navigating complex, sometimes difficult discussions with professionalism and tact.\nDirect experience working within a mission-critical data centre environment, with strong foundational familiarity with day-to-day facility operations.\nStrong commercial and contractual literacy - comfortable working with SLAs, OLAs, KPIs, and vendor scorecards.\nProven track record of arranging, structuring, and organising critical operational meetings (QBRs, syncs), setting agendas, capturing actions, and keeping multi-stakeholder work moving.\nComfortable operating with ambiguity and building a function from the ground up.\nDesirable\nA strong, high-level understanding of data centre infrastructure (power, cooling, facility systems) - not required to be an engineer, but comfortable learning and discussing technical concepts with Reliability Engineering and vendor technical teams.\nExperience in a high-growth infrastructure, data centre, or hyperscale environment.\nPrior people-management experience, or demonstrable readiness to build and lead a team as the function scales regionally.\nFamiliarity with data centre operational reporting, PUE, uptime, or related facility performance metrics.\nWillingness to travel across EMEA, including internationally, for site visits and provider alignment (up to ~25%).\nSuccess Measures (Indicative)\nVendor performance scorecard implemented and running across all in-scope EMEA sites.\nConsistent, on-time vendor data feeding into exec reporting.\nClear, agreed change and incident coordination model in place with internal stakeholders (Reliability Engineering, site operations), tested and working.\nQBR/operational sync cadence established and running with all vendors.\nVendor relationships assessed as strong/stable by internal stakeholders and vendor partners alike.\nWhat We Offer\nThe opportunity to shape the foundational physical layer of the global AI boom, and to build a new function from the ground up in EMEA.\nCompetitive compensation including equity options in a hyper-growth, heavily backed hyperscaler.\nComprehensive health, wellness, and pension benefits.\nA collaborative, fast-paced environment where your operational frameworks directly impact company scaling velocity.\nFor information on how Nscale handles candidate personal data, please see our Employee & Candidate Privacy Notice: Here.\nNscale does not accept unsolicited candidate submissions from recruitment agencies.","description_format":"text","description_chars":8470,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United Kingdom","iso":"GB","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Information Technology","Data Centers","Cloud Computing"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-10T20:22:42Z"}],"liveness":{"score":72,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.798,"p_room":0.9,"age_days":37,"expected_fill_days":56,"reasons":["conf:3","velocity","win:mid","comp:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-09-24T05:45:00Z"},"pay":null,"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/nscale-senior-manager-data-centre-vendor-operations-governance","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/nscale-senior-manager-data-centre-vendor-operations-governance.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-09-25T00:37:10Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","usage":{"tier":"crawler","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":516,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":4484,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-09-26T00:00:00Z"}}}