Senior Manager, Data Centre Vendor Operations & Governance

Senior Manager, Data Centre Vendor Operations & Governance (EMEA) - London base preferred (Hybrid); regular site travel, up to ~25% incl. international About Nscale Nscale 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. At 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. Role Purpose The 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. This 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. Key Responsibilities 1. Vendor Governance & Relationship Management • Own 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. • Establish, 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. • Own commercial escalation for SLA credits and Master Services Agreement (MSA) compliance. • Design, arrange, and lead Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) and monthly operational syncs with vendor leadership. • Build and maintain strong working relationships with vendor account teams and senior stakeholders, balancing collaborative partnership with the ability to hold vendors firmly to account. 2. Internal Partnership & Governance • Partner 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. • Partner with site/GPU operations teams to align vendor change and incident processes with operational scheduling and workload demands. • Chair a joint governance forum with internal stakeholders to review vendor performance, escalations, and process friction. • Own 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. 3. Change, Incident & Compliance Management • Own vendor-facing coordination of change requests, ensuring technical approval (Reliability Engineering) and scheduling inputs are properly sequenced. • Act as the vendor-facing point of contact during incidents, ensuring the right internal teams are engaged and vendors are held to response commitments. • Drive 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. • Ensure 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. • Verify 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. 4. Reporting, Capacity & Future Planning • Review 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. • Feed consolidated, quality-assured vendor data into Nscale's wider executive reporting programme. • Partner with Capacity Planning and Deployment teams to align vendor space, power delivery schedules, and fit-out timelines with incoming GPU fleet arrivals. • Build 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. What We Are Looking For Essential • 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. • Extensive 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. • Direct experience working within a mission-critical data centre environment, with strong foundational familiarity with day-to-day facility operations. • Strong commercial and contractual literacy — comfortable working with SLAs, OLAs, KPIs, and vendor scorecards. • Proven track record of arranging, structuring, and organising critical operational meetings (QBRs, syncs), setting agendas, capturing actions, and keeping multi-stakeholder work moving. • Comfortable operating with ambiguity and building a function from the ground up. Desirable • A 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. • Experience in a high-growth infrastructure, data centre, or hyperscale environment. • Prior people-management experience, or demonstrable readiness to build and lead a team as the function scales regionally. • Familiarity with data centre operational reporting, PUE, uptime, or related facility performance metrics. • Willingness to travel across EMEA, including internationally, for site visits and provider alignment (up to ~25%). Success Measures (Indicative) • Vendor performance scorecard implemented and running across all in-scope EMEA sites. • Consistent, on-time vendor data feeding into exec reporting. • Clear, agreed change and incident coordination model in place with internal stakeholders (Reliability Engineering, site operations), tested and working. • QBR/operational sync cadence established and running with all vendors. • Vendor relationships assessed as strong/stable by internal stakeholders and vendor partners alike. What We Offer • The opportunity to shape the foundational physical layer of the global AI boom, and to build a new function from the ground up in EMEA. • Competitive compensation including equity options in a hyper-growth, heavily backed hyperscaler. • Comprehensive health, wellness, and pension benefits. • A collaborative, fast-paced environment where your operational frameworks directly impact company scaling velocity. 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