Director, Memphis Power Plant Operations

Location: Must be based at the Memphis, Tennessee site; requires support for plant operations and construction during nights, weekends, extended hours, and on-call periods.

Company

xAI develops AI systems designed to understand the universe and support humanity's pursuit of knowledge.

What you will do

• Provide strategic and operational leadership for a gas turbine power plant, including 24/7 operations, maintenance, commissioning, construction, and capacity expansion.
• Own reliable, high-availability electrical power delivery to the Colossus data center and AI training clusters.
• Lead operators, technicians, engineers, contractors, and support staff across operations and construction.
• Oversee plant performance, testing, commissioning, and integration with data center electrical infrastructure.
• Develop maintenance, outage planning, fuel management, budgeting, and capital project strategies.
• Represent the site with data center teams, suppliers, OEMs, utilities, regulators, and the Memphis community.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in mechanical, electrical, or another engineering discipline.
• 8+ years of experience in power generation operations, plant management, or related industrial or aerospace operations.
• 5+ years of leadership experience managing operators, technicians, and engineers.
• Experience operating or managing simple-cycle or combined-cycle gas turbine power plants.
• Knowledge of high-voltage systems, generators, switchgear, protection systems, emissions controls, and balance-of-plant systems.
• Ability to work onsite at the Memphis, Tennessee facility and support operations outside normal business hours.

Nice to have

• Experience managing 100 MW+ gas turbine facilities and critical-power applications.
• Experience with plant construction, commissioning, start-up, and concurrent operations and expansion.
• Experience with environmental permitting, air-quality compliance, regulatory reporting, budgets, fuel costs, contractors, and complex stakeholders.
• Experience in fast-paced, high-growth, startup environments with aggressive timelines.

Culture & Benefits

• Hands-on, engineering-focused environment with a flat organizational structure.
• Emphasis on safety, accountability, operational excellence, rapid execution, and collaboration.
• Work includes industrial and outdoor environments with heat, noise, equipment access, and general physical activity.
• Requires autonomous work, extended hours, nights, weekends, and on-call response to maintain plant reliability and construction milestones.