Data Center Coordinator (Chicago)

Data Center Coordinator

Locations: Chicago or Little Rock

About Them

A global quantitative trading firm headquartered in Chicago, with offices in Amsterdam, Little Rock, London, New York, and Singapore. We are deeply committed to attracting and retaining world-class talent, and we back that commitment with highly competitive compensation packages. We also offer competitive benefits packages, which include comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance, and a 401(k) retirement plan with company match. Our small, collaborative teams are built to give every employee real ownership our employees have the opportunity to become the go-to expert in their domain, supported by a culture of innovation and ongoing professional development. We also take pride in creating a workplace people genuinely enjoy, including snacks, frequent swag drops, team events, and more.

About the Role

Headlands is looking for a motivated Data Center Coordinator to help maintain our fleet of trading and infrastructure servers across data centers worldwide. A significant portion of this role focuses on coordinating installations, repairs, and audits with colocation providers and remote-hands vendors at sites we don't staff directly, so discipline, attention to detail, and strong written communication are essential.

You'll work closely with our with our engineering teams to execute change windows aligned to market hours.

What You'll Do

• Rack, stack, cable, and decommission servers, switches, and storage equipment in our Global Footprint
• Maintain organized, labeled, well-documented installations
• Coordinate installations, audits, and repairs at remote data center sites globally with colocation providers and remote-hands vendors
• Manage 15–20 concurrent projects across multiple sites with clear tracking, status updates, and stakeholder communication
• Diagnose and replace failed components DIMMs, NICs, NVMe/SSDs, PSUs, optics, etc.
• Perform first-level network troubleshooting (cabling, transceivers, link/port diagnostics, basic switch CLI)
• Maintain accurate asset inventory, rack elevations, and cabling documentation
• Execute scheduled change windows, the majority of which occur Friday evening through Saturday morning
• Partner with infrastructure and networking engineers to plan deployments and post-mortem incidents

Required Qualifications

• Prior hands-on data center experience (rack-and-stack, structured cabling, hardware troubleshooting)
• Working knowledge of server hardware and out-of-band management (IPMI / iDRAC / iLO)
• Basic networking troubleshooting skills cabling, optics, link/port-level issues, basic switch CLI familiarity
• Strong organizational skills with a proven ability to manage many concurrent projects.
• Excellent written and verbal communication; comfortable-owning vendor relationships and writing clear tickets and runbooks
• Self-directed; able to make progress and prioritize without close supervision
• Willingness to work the published shift schedule, including overnight Friday-into-Saturday change windows
• Authorized to work in the United States

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with ticketing / ITSM systems (Jira, ServiceNow, or similar)
• Familiarity with optics and transceivers (SFP / SFP+ / SFP28 / QSFP / QSFP28 / QSFP-DD) and patch testing
• Experience supporting low-latency, HPC, or trading environments
• Familiarity with colocation operations and major providers (Equinix, CoreSite, Digital Realty, etc.)
• Basic Linux command-line comfort

Schedule

• Tuesday–Thursday: standard daytime hours, roughly 9am–5pm
• Friday–Saturday: shift work; the majority of hands-on installation and change activity happens Friday evening through early Saturday morning, aligned to weekend market closure

Other Notes

• No specific degree is required for this role.
• Prior experience in FinTech or trading is not required, we'll teach you what's specific to our environment.
• This is an in-office / on-site role.