VP, AI Ops

About the role

Built to set the gold standard for integrated AI infrastructure   Crux AI is a newly formed, U.S.-based integrated AI infrastructure company created to remove the physical and operational constraints on consequential AI ambitions. Crux brings together power, high-density data centers, TPU silicon, networking, orchestration software, and ongoing operations as one integrated system.   Crux is being capitalized to plan every layer together, develop each one to demanding standards, and operate the whole system with efficiency and reliability. That gives hyperscalers, frontier AI labs, sovereign customers, enterprises, and AI-native companies greater freedom to pursue the AI they are here to create.   What you'll do You will define how Crux runs its TPU fleet, and build it so that AI agents, not people, do most of the operating. Reporting to our CTPO, you will own the telemetry that ties our facilities, clusters, and network together, the incident and change processes that govern them, and the autonomous systems that detect, triage, and remediate failures before a customer notices. As the first leader of this function, you will write the operating model, hire the team, and take it from the first Stage 1 build to fleet scale, partnering with Compute, Network Engineering, Facility Operations, Security, Customer Success, and Google. In this role, you will: - Own one telemetry and event pipeline across power, cooling, TPU hosts, interconnect, and the control plane, with the correlation to tell a failing pump from a failing chip from a failing job. - Build AI agents that triage alerts, run runbooks, drain and requeue workloads, and initiate RMAs with Google, with a measured share of work closed with zero human touch. - Set SLOs and error budgets for every Crux service, and run the incident, postmortem, and change process that holds the fleet to them. - Stand up 24/7 fleet operations where agents handle repeat failures and people handle novel ones, then turn them into automation. - Hire and develop SRE, fleet operations, and AI tooling leaders. Signals of success After 90 days in this role: - Published the AI Ops operating model: SLOs, on-call and escalation, incident process, and ownership boundaries with adjacent teams. - Mapped every critical failure mode for the first build to a signal, an alert, a runbook, and an owner. After 6 months: - Taken the first Stage 1 cluster into production with SLOs met. - Built, hands-on, AI agents the team uses every day, with a measured share of incidents resolved without human intervention. After 1 year: - Run a multi-site fleet where most operational work executes autonomously, with measurable gains in availability, recovery time, and cost per chip. - Become a reason strong SRE and operations engineers choose Crux. Experiences, attributes and mindset that indicate a good match Experiences - 15+ years in large-scale infrastructure operations, SRE, or network operations, including 7+ years leading multi-team organizations. - Ran production for a cloud, hyperscaler, or colocation platform against hard SLAs across many sites. - Built and shipped AI-driven operations systems (event correlation, auto-remediation, agentic triage) at measurable scale. Attributes - Outcome driven and hands-on. You read the telemetry and write the agent yourself. This is a builder's seat, not a supervisory one. Mindset - Skeptical by default. "90% automated" is a hypothesis until it survives a bad night at a new site. - Reliability through discipline, not heroics. You build the system that makes the next incident boring. - AI-agentic first. Fluent with AI agents, or committed to becoming so quickly, you embed them as first principles in how you and your team work, defaulting to agentic workflows before adding headcount or process. Nice to have (Preferred, not required): - SRE or fleet operations leadership at a hyperscaler or neocloud. - Global NOC or data center interconnect operations across 100+ sites. - Operating TPU or GPU clusters for large training and inference workloads. - Patents or publications in AIOps, autonomous operations, or network automation. Salary Range Information The annual salary range for this position has been estimated based on market data and other factors. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description. About Crux - We offer generous base, bonus and additional incentive based compensation - Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents - Company-paid life insurance and disability - Full suite of other optional benefits - 401(k) Plan with 4% company match - Hybrid schedule offering four days in-office collaboration paired with one remote workday for focused, individual work