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General Manager, Data Centers

Instawork · Chicago, Illinois

Location
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Employment
Full time
Level
Manager
Posted
2 months ago

About this role

Instawork is on a mission to create meaningful economic opportunities for skilled hourly professionals in communities around the globe. Our AI-powered labor marketplace helps local businesses scale, and enables global technology companies to push the frontiers of robotics and AI. Backed by world-class investors like Benchmark, Spark Capital, Craft Ventures, Greylock, Y Combinator, and others, we’re looking for exceptional talent to reimagine the way the world works.

Instawork is seeking a General Manager, Data Centers, to accelerate and scale our rapidly growing presence in the booming data center industry. Working closely with Instawork’s leadership team, this is a high-octane opportunity to drive strategy, capture market share, and optimize execution in one of the world's fastest-growing sectors.

You will be tasked with scaling the connection between our 10M+ flexible workers ("Pros") and the massive, continuous labor demands of data center builders, general contractors, operators, and hyperscalers. Your goal: parachute into high-impact expansion initiatives, optimize our go-to-market strategy, supercharge our supply and demand engines, and do absolutely whatever it takes to accelerate the marketplace flywheel in critical data center hubs.

What You’ll Do

  • Scale the Playbook: Take our data center vertical from 1 to 10. You will drive operational excellence - whether that means streamlining complex site-access and safety protocols, standardizing onboarding for massive construction build-outs and hardware deployments, or expanding our footprint in key markets - until the vertical is a massive, self-sustaining engine.
  • Strategic Execution & Partnership Expansion: Refine and implement Instawork’s growth strategy for the data center space. Cultivate, grow, and own relationships with top-tier general contractors, data center operators, colocation providers, and infrastructure tech giants, turning initial pilots into enterprise-wide deployments.
  • Market & Data Needs Analysis: Deeply understand the unique labor, compliance, and safety requirements of both active construction sites and live data center environments. Leverage data to anticipate partner pain points and ensure Instawork’s tech and operations can seamlessly support their massive, fluctuating workforce needs throughout the entire facility lifecycle.
  • Cross-Functional Leadership: Collaborate closely with Sales, Marketing, Product, and Operations to move aggressively and iterate on the fly. You will turn operational friction into scalable, automated processes and act as an internal driver of cross-functional alignment to unblock growth.
  • Thought Leadership & Evangelism: Represent Instawork externally as a thought leader in the data center workforce space. Regularly present progress, growth metrics, and strategic recommendations to Instawork's executive leadership, shaping the company’s long-term vision for infrastructure support.
  • Own the Road: Expect extensive travel to major data center markets. Your office is wherever the next massive launch, key partner expansion, or operational optimization takes you.

Who You Are

  • Domain Expert & Relationship Builder: 4+ years of experience in commercial construction (specifically mission-critical or data center builds), data center operations, infrastructure scaling, or management consulting within the tech/infrastructure space. You understand the full lifecycle of a data center, from ground-breaking and construction to commissioning and ongoing facilities management.
  • Scaling Mindset & Extreme Bias for Action: You don't wait for permission or perfect data; you deliver results. You thrive in a high-pressure environment where the pace is fast, expectations are massive, and you know how to build systems that sustain hyper-growth.
  • Strategic & Curious: You think big-picture while staying fiercely grounded in data and execution. You are deeply comfortable with fast iteration, navigating complex enterprise requirements, and solving unstructured problems in a rapidly evolving industry.
  • Multi-disciplinary Executor: You have a proven track record of managing high-growth expansion, optimizing complex operations, and turning early momentum into sustainable, long-term market dominance. You are highly skilled at working across multiple functions to deliver results.

For IL-based applicants:

  • The base salary for this position is $160,000 - $200,000
  • This position is eligible for equity in the form of stock options
  • This position is eligible for Instawork benefits, including:
    • A variety of medical, dental, and vision plans with coverage beginning on the date of hire
    • Flexible paid time off
    • At least 8 paid company holidays annually
    • Phone stipend
    • Commuter stipend
    • Supplemental pay on qualified leaves
    • Employee health savings accounts (HSA) contribution
    • Flexible spending plans
    • 401K plan
    • Perkspot - discount program through Lumity

A variety of factors are considered when determining someone’s compensation, including a candidate’s professional background, experience, and location. Final offer amounts may vary from the amounts listed above.

#LI-OnSite

Our Values

  • Empathy, Trust & Candor
    We put ourselves in the shoes of our colleagues and customers and don’t shy away from uncomfortable conversations, instead building trust through honest and direct feedback.

  • Bias for Action
    We practice high-velocity decision-making, clear-eyed that we often operate with incomplete information. Growing quickly means it’s OK to be wrong, so long as we learn from our mistakes and course correct!

  • Always Be Learning
    We’re a curious bunch, and with AI transforming our workplace we encourage everyone to learn from each other, compounding our knowledge and experience to help us change an entire industry.

  • Act Like an Owner
    We work long, hard, and smart, building products that delight our users and drive growth. Your ability to impact Instawork is limited only by your courage and conviction, not your job description.

About Instawork

Founded in 2015, Instawork is the nation’s leading online labor marketplace for food services, hospitality, light industry, and logistics, connecting more than 7M skilled workers with local restaurants, hotels, warehouses, stadiums, and more. Our AI-powered platform serves thousands of businesses across more than 50 major markets in the United States and Canada. We're not just helping fill shifts, we're supporting local economies - and we're just getting started!

Instawork has been featured by CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press. Forbes included us on their Next Billion Dollar Startups list; RetailTech Breakthrough named us Workforce Hiring Solution of the Year for 2025; and Inc. 5000 recognized us as one of the country's top 10% fastest-growing companies two years in a row. But what matters most is our impact. We're solving real problems for real people, and we’re doing it at scale.

Join our team to help us build something that matters! We’re looking for superstars who want to help us shape the future of work. With hubs in San Francisco, Bangalore, and Chicago, city offices in New York, Phoenix, and Singapore, we're back to working together in-person five days a week because we believe the best ideas happen when great people collaborate face-to-face. We also value diverse perspectives and encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds.

Ready to make an impact? Learn more at www.instawork.com/about.

Personnel Privacy Policy

As published by Instawork. Applications are handled on their site.

Skills this posting mentions

Apache SparkArtificial IntelligenceCommissioning

About Instawork

At Instawork, we’re driven by our vision to create economic opportunity for local businesses and skilled hourly professionals in communities around the world. Our accomplished and dedicated team is passionate about our mission and committed to creating products that bring together businesses and skilled hourly workers together in a meaningful way.

All 53 openings at Instawork

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  1. 01Drop your resume

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