Principal AI Data Centres

About the Role

Echelon is seeking a Principal AI Data Centres to lead its infrastructure partnerships and the business built on them. This full-time role is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and reports directly to the Chief Executive Officer. The Principal will be responsible for defining how Echelon advises and builds with its partners, ensuring these positions are commercially viable.

Key Responsibilities

• Establish and maintain long-term relationships with operators and suppliers, ensuring shared plans, clear commitments, and effective governance.
• Secure large capacity programs with partners, structuring deals across the entire lifecycle to reward Echelon for added value.
• Identify new customers requiring capacity, including AI providers, hyperscalers, national programs, and large enterprises, and identify partners to expand Echelon's delivery capabilities.
• Build and lead the team, developing the operating model to define Echelon's internal activities, partner responsibilities, and procurement strategies, including cost, governance, and insourcing decisions.
• Implement quality gates, operating procedures, and liability lines, agreed with partners, to ensure all Echelon sites meet industry benchmarks.
• Develop Echelon's team capability, fostering growth from engineering and build management into network, security, and facility operations.
• Create robust business cases for new capacity, covering demand, power, chip-generation ramp, capital structure, offtake, and returns, designed to withstand scrutiny from customers, partners, and investors.

Required Qualifications and Experience

• Over 10 years of experience in building or leading data centre, cloud, or power programs for operators, developers, hyperscalers, or advisory firms.
• Demonstrated leadership in managing partnerships between companies of varying sizes and cultures, ensuring commitment from inception to delivery.
• In-depth understanding of commercial and financial deal structuring, project models, capital and operating costs, revenue share, offtake, and returns.
• Knowledge of how AI workloads impact power density, liquid cooling, chip generation pace, and their effects on design, cost, and schedule.
• Experience in hiring and leading specialist teams, building capabilities from initial hires and projects, and setting scalable standards.

Preferred Qualifications

• Exposure to hyperscale and AI campuses of 100 MW and above, covering aspects from site and power to handover and operations.
• Experience with licensed or franchised operating models where design and operating standards are delivered by another entity.
• Familiarity with infrastructure investors, project finance, or joint ventures.

Work Approach and Values

The successful candidate will prioritize customer outcomes, demonstrate ownership of results, and communicate complex systems clearly. This role requires comfort with ambiguity, the ability to make progress with incomplete information, and a long-term building mindset. The Principal will also be expected to develop others and build capability with customers. A key aspect of the work approach involves starting from the problem, learning continuously, moving quickly from brief to result, and applying rigor in testing claims and explaining choices. The role demands confidence balanced with humility, autonomy in decision-making, resourcefulness, and situational leadership. Proficiency in using AI tools for planning, modeling, and decision-making is also expected.

Compensation and Environment

This position offers a base salary along with housing, transport, and education allowances, medical cover, and equity through an employee equity program. Specific terms will be shared at the offer stage. Regular travel to customer sites and some travel to partner teams in the United States is required.