Principal, Facilities AI

Title: Principal, Facilities AI Location: Alexandria, Virginia, United States; Austin, Texas, United States; Denver, Colorado, United States; Remote US; Seattle, Washington, United States

Fleet Data Centers designs, builds and operates mega-scale data center campuses. Fleet provides its customers flexibility and predictability to meet their upside demand forecasts, addressing a key need in the market as traditional leased models are struggling to keep pace with the demand for new Cloud and AI infrastructure. Fleet is led by a team of industry veterans that have already made a lasting imprint on the evolution of global digital infrastructure and are committed and uniquely capable of upleveling data center development scale and operations in the face of rising demand. Fleet is well positioned to bring in-house design, engineering and operational capabilities to collaborate with customers on tailored solutions for campuses of 500MW+. This unique model enables Fleet to provide the world’s largest and most sophisticated customers a seamless extension of their own data center fleets with constant access to design innovation.

The Principal – Facilities AI is Fleet’s senior individual contributor responsible for developing the strategy, use cases, technical standards, and implementation roadmap for applying AI, machine learning, and automation to mission-critical facilities operations. This role identifies where automation materially improves safety, reliability, speed, quality, and labor productivity—and ensures those solutions are operationally credible, governed, and scalable.

This role works across Operations, Facilities Engineering, Critical Systems, Data, and Product/Technology stakeholders to translate operational problems into practical digital solutions that improve field execution and decision quality.

What You Will Do

• Safety, security, and availability are the most important things we do. Help Fleet deliver near-perfect execution on these dimensions by identifying and implementing automation that measurably improves operational outcomes.
• Define Fleet’s facilities AI, ML, and automation strategy across use cases such as alarm rationalization, predictive maintenance, anomaly detection, workflow automation, digital assistants, failure prediction, and operational reporting.
• Identify high-value operational pain points and build the business cases, requirements, and adoption plans needed to implement solutions that matter.
• Partner with site operations, facilities engineering, critical systems, and data teams to ensure models and automations are grounded in real operating conditions and trustworthy data.
• Establish governance for model quality, explainability, human-in-the-loop controls, change management, and risk management in operational environments.
• Drive pilot design, validation criteria, implementation sequencing, and scale-up decisions based on measurable performance.
• Help shape data standards, instrumentation requirements, system integrations, and telemetry quality needed to support advanced analytics and automation.
• Create clear technical and operational documentation so that solutions can be adopted, audited, supported, and improved over time.
• Serve as a thought leader on practical AI and automation applications for critical infrastructure, balancing innovation with reliability and operational discipline.
• Advise leaders on where automation should accelerate work, where it should support humans, and where it should not be used.

What You Bring

• 10+ years of experience spanning mission-critical facilities, industrial automation, data systems, advanced analytics, or related engineering disciplines.
• Demonstrated experience applying automation, analytics, or machine learning to real operational workflows or physical infrastructure environments.
• Strong understanding of data center operations, critical systems, maintenance, telemetry, or industrial monitoring.
• Ability to translate ambiguous operational problems into practical product, data, or automation requirements.
• Strong understanding of data quality, systems integration, workflow design, and adoption challenges in operational settings.
• Strong communication skills and executive presence, with the ability to influence across technical and operational functions.
• High standards for governance, safety, explainability, and operational credibility.
• Expert knowledge of AI fundamentals, multiple model types, and their application/use cases.

Preferred

• Experience with DCIM/BMS/EPMS/SCADA, CMMS, or operational data platforms in data centers or similar critical infrastructure.
• Experience designing decision-support tools, anomaly detection solutions, predictive maintenance models, or workflow automation tools for operations organizations.
• Familiarity with hyperscale, colocation, utility, manufacturing, or other high-availability environments.

Travel

• Willingness and ability to travel to Fleet sites as needed.

Compensation

• $170,000-190,000 Base Salary + Discretionary Bonus.

#LI-Remote

Fleet Data Centers employees enjoy competitive compensation and comprehensive benefits, including 100% employer-covered medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401K program, standard paid holidays, and unlimited PTO.

NOTE: This job description is not intended to be all-inclusive. Employees may perform other related duties to meet the organization's ongoing needs.