Associate Director, Data Center

About us

Christian & Timbers has been placing CEOs, boards and technology leaders since 1980, with more than 5,000 executive placements and 500 CEO searches. Today we are the fastest-growing executive search firm in the United States and the first retained executive search firm built for AI. We grew 80% in 2025 and are on track to more than double in 2026. We are roughly 60 people across the United States, Canada and Europe, and we move fast because our clients do.

The role

AI runs on power, silicon and data centers, and the leaders who build them sit inside utilities, IPPs, hyperscalers, fabs and semiconductor companies. As Associate Director in our Data Center and Advanced Compute practice, you will run retained searches in this market, speak its technical language, and deliver leaders our clients cannot find on their own.

What you will own

• Searches, end to end. Strategy, mapping, outreach, assessment and close, with a partner accountable for the relationship and you accountable for the work.
• Market mapping. A tiered target universe across utilities, IPPs, hyperscalers, data center developers and semiconductor companies.
• Senior outreach. Messages that a VP of Data Center Development or a fab leader actually answers.
• Technical screening. What they built, at what MW, which interconnect, which node, and which yield or throughput problem was theirs.
• Assessments clients trust. The signal, and how it was validated, with evidence rather than adjectives.
• Your research team. You set priorities for the analysts on each search and keep Loxo and HubSpot accurate.
• Client relationships. Over time, you grow relationships with founders, investors and boards, and help bring in new business.

Must have

• Three or more years in executive search, third-party recruiting, or business development for a search or professional services firm, ideally in your current role. This seat requires agency or search firm experience, so in-house recruiting backgrounds are not a match.
• Real fluency in data center and advanced compute : power, grid interconnect, energy, semiconductors, chip design, advanced packaging, memory, high-throughput networking, or large-scale data center development and operations.
• A track record of engaging senior technical leaders who are not actively looking.
• Intellectual curiosity. You follow power, silicon and infrastructure on your own time.
• Intensity and ambition. You want to be a partner, or at least find out whether you can be.
• Excellent written English. Your profiles reach boards and CEOs largely unedited.

Nice to have

Retained search experience, venture- or PE-backed clients, an engineering, physics, or EE background, or an existing network in fabs, hyperscalers, IPPs, and utilities.

What you get

• A written path to Partner, decided on evidence, not tenure, with a named partner sponsor from week one
• A dedicated research team behind every search
• Searches at the center of the AI and compute buildout
• Competitive base salary with performance-linked upside

Where you will work

Fully remote anywhere in the United States on Pacific hours, or hybrid if you are in Cleveland or San Francisco. The team meets in person four times a year. Those meetups are optional but encouraged, and we cover the travel.

Christian & Timbers is an equal opportunity employer.