Data Center Coordinator

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.

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.
• This is an in-office / on-site role.