Technical Services Director, Global Data Center & Lab Infrastructure

About this role

About Graphcore

Graphcore is a global leader in artificial intelligence computing systems. We design advanced semiconductors and data center hardware that deliver the specialized processing power needed to advance AI while improving the efficiency required for broad adoption.

As part of SoftBank Group, Graphcore belongs to a family of companies developing some of the world's most transformative technologies. Our AI Engineering Campus in Austin plays an important role in building the future of AI computing.

The Opportunity

As Technical Services Director, you will lead the teams that operate and evolve Graphcore's engineering labs, high-performance computing (HPC) platforms, and data center environments globally. You will be accountable for reliable, secure, cost-effective infrastructure that supports demanding engineering, AI, silicon-development, and validation workloads.

This role combines people leadership, infrastructure strategy, operational excellence, capacity and financial planning, procurement, and program delivery. You will partner with Engineering, Information Technology, Security, Finance, Facilities, Supply Chain, customers, and external suppliers. The position is based onsite in Austin and requires travel to company facilities, data centers, and supplier locations, including international travel.

What You'll Do

• Lead, recruit, mentor, and develop the systems administration, lab operations, and technical services teams responsible for the facility supporting global Engineering and Research and Development.

• Own the reliability, efficiency, protection, safety, supportability, and continuous improvement of engineering labs, HPC systems, and infrastructure facilities.

• Establish service levels, operating standards, escalation paths, performance measures, monitoring, observability, automation, ticketing, and configuration-management practices.

• Translate engineering and customer requirements into infrastructure roadmaps, capacity plans, procurement strategies, operating models, and executable investment programs.

• Forecast compute, accelerator, storage, network, rack-space, power, cooling, and technical-support requirements across the infrastructure portfolio.

• Lead global infrastructure programs from requirements and business-case development through procurement, deployment, operational readiness, service handoff, expansion, refresh, and decommissioning.

• Own infrastructure procurement and supplier performance, including specifications, bills of materials, quotations, commercial negotiations, purchase orders, logistics, delivery schedules, and deployment coordination.

• Develop and lead operating budgets, capital plans, expense frameworks, projections, lifecycle plans, and investment proposals for infrastructure operations and growth.

• Build strategic relationships with hardware vendors, colocation providers, integrators, maintenance partners, and other technical service suppliers.

• Ensure HPC environments are efficiently utilized, maintained, and capable of supporting large-scale engineering, AI, simulation, and hardware-validation workloads.

• Maintain appropriate security, safety, operational, and compliance controls; support reviews involving frameworks such as ISO 27001, SOC/SSAE, and PCI DSS where applicable.

• Engage internal and external customers on infrastructure capabilities, requirements, service delivery, resilience, security, and compliance.

• Provide concise executive reporting on infrastructure health, capacity, risks, budgets, supplier performance, service quality, and coordination of programs.

What You'll Bring

• Significant leadership experience in global technical infrastructure, engineering labs, systems engineering, HPC, Information Technology operations, or data center services.

• Proven success leading and developing geographically distributed technical teams, including managers and senior individual contributors.

• Deep knowledge of HPC and data center environments, including server architecture, Linux-based systems, accelerators, high-speed interconnects, parallel storage, cluster management, workload scheduling, and monitoring.

• Experience supporting semiconductor development, silicon bring-up, hardware validation, systems engineering, or similarly complex engineering environments.

• A record of developing and executing multi-site infrastructure strategy, capacity plans, lifecycle programs, and operating models aligned with engineering and business priorities.

• Experience operating business-critical compute and lab infrastructure with clear expectations for availability, performance, security, safety, and support.

• Experience leading complex cross-functional programs involving Engineering, Facilities, Information Technology, Finance, Security, Supply Chain, and third-party vendors.

• Strong procurement and commercial experience, including requirements, supplier evaluation, contract negotiation, purchase-order processes, logistics, and delivery management.

• Experience developing global budgets, cost models, forecasts, investment proposals, and lifecycle plans for technical infrastructure.

• Working knowledge of rack integration, structured cabling, power, cooling, physical security, capacity management, operational controls, and relevant compliance frameworks.

• Strong strategic, analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills, including the ability to influence senior leaders and explain complex issues to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.

• Ability and willingness to work onsite in Austin and travel internationally as required.

• A bachelor's degree in engineering, computer science, information technology, or another relevant technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience designing, deploying, or operating large-scale HPC clusters or supercomputing platforms.

• Knowledge of GPU-accelerated computing, AI infrastructure, and NVIDIA reference arc

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