Senior Manager, Physical Infrastructure Engineering

We are looking for a Senior Manager of Physical Infrastructure Engineering who is passionate about the electrical, mechanical, and controls engineering that keeps leading-edge AI/GPU infrastructure running reliably at scale.

As Senior Manager of Physical Infrastructure Engineering, you will lead a multidisciplinary engineering team — electrical, mechanical, controls/automation, and infrastructure engineering and construction — responsible for the standards, specifications, and technical decisions that every new build, retrofit, and deployment across DigitalOcean's global footprint must meet. You are the technical authority for data center infrastructure: Design & Deployment executes floor layouts and installs against your team’s standards; you own the standards themselves, the engineering judgment behind them, and the reliability outcomes that follow. This role reports directly to the VP of Data Center Operations & Engineering.

• Lead and grow a multidisciplinary team covering electrical, mechanical, controls/automation, and data center infrastructure engineering and construction.
• Develop and own engineering standards and specifications for AI/GPU data centers, including liquid cooling (CDU sizing, secondary loop design, leak detection), power distribution, and controls/automation.
• Serve as the technical authority and final engineering escalation point for infrastructure issues that Site Operations and Design & Deployment cannot resolve at their level.
• Provide engineering due diligence on new colocation and build-to-suit facilities before signing — power capacity, cooling topology, electrical infrastructure condition, and expansion feasibility.
• Own vendor and OEM infrastructure engineering relationships (e.g., CDU, UPS, generator, and switchgear manufacturers) — drive root-cause engagements when infrastructure fails, and hold vendors accountable for design defects, not just field service.
• Lead or sponsor root-cause analysis for infrastructure-driven incidents, and own the resulting engineering corrective actions through to verified completion, not just documentation.
• Own infrastructure specifications, technical documentation, and change governance — nothing changes at the infrastructure layer without engineering sign-off.
• Partner with Site Operations, Deployment, Construction, and Design organizations to ensure engineering standards are practical to build and operate, not just technically correct on paper.
• Track and report on infrastructure reliability metrics across the fleet, and prioritize engineering investment against the highest-risk, highest-recurrence failure modes.
• Lead compliance review of infrastructure standards against relevant codes and safety requirements (e.g., NFPA 70E, electrical code, two-person energized work rules) in partnership with Legal and EHS.
• Build and maintain an audit process for reviewing existing sites against current engineering standards, and prioritize remediation of out-of-compliance assets.
• Manage outsourced engineering talent where required to keep up with workload
• Develop engineering and construction talent on your team and build a succession plan for key technical authority roles

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