---
title: 'Director, Memphis Power Plant Operations at xAI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/director-memphis-power-plant-operations-xai-southaven-c8cc8gq8p3bk'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-19'
---

# Director, Memphis Power Plant Operations at xAI

- **Company:** xAI
- **Location:** Southaven, MS
- **Posted:** 2026-08-20
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-19
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/xai/jobs/5216112007

## Job description

SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today, SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of making life multiplanetary and expanding consciousness to the stars.

SpaceXSI is building Super Intelligence to help humanity understand the universe. Our teams are building the full Super Intelligence stack: from our Colossus supercomputers, to Grok models, to our suite of applications, including Grok Bot, Grok Build, Grok Imagine, Grok Voice, and X. We're creating a powerful flywheel where more compute trains better models, better models power more useful products, and what we learn from people using those products shapes what we build next.

## ABOUT THE ROLE:

The Director, Memphis Power Plant Operations provides strategic and operational leadership for the gas turbine power generation facility supporting SpaceXSI's Colossus data center campus in Memphis, Tennessee. This role oversees all plant operations, maintenance, commissioning, and continued construction/expansion of the dedicated power plant, with full ownership of delivering reliable, high-availability electrical power to the Colossus AI training clusters. The position is responsible for driving operational excellence, ensuring 24/7 power reliability and quality, safety, environmental compliance, and leading cross-functional teams to achieve aggressive scale-up, availability, cost, and schedule objectives in a high-growth, fast-paced environment.

## RESPONSIBILITIES:

- Provide strategic and operational leadership for the Memphis gas turbine power plant, including 24/7 operations, maintenance, commissioning, and ongoing construction and capacity expansion
- Own end-to-end delivery of electrical power to the Colossus data center sites, ensuring industry-leading reliability, availability, power quality, and redundancy
- Lead multidisciplinary teams of operators, maintenance technicians, engineers, contractors, and support staff in a 24/7 operational and construction environment
- Oversee plant performance, commissioning, testing, and seamless integration with data center electrical infrastructure and load
- Develop and execute comprehensive operations and maintenance strategies, including preventative/predictive maintenance, outage planning, hot gas path management, and OEM coordination for gas turbines, generators, balance of plant, and high-voltage electrical systems
- Manage concurrent construction, equipment installation, civil works, and phased capacity expansions while maintaining safe, reliable operation of the existing plant
- Ensure full compliance with environmental, safety, and regulatory requirements, including air permits, emissions controls, TDEC, EPA, OSHA, and local authorities
- Partner closely with SpaceXSI data center operations, engineering, fuel suppliers, OEMs, utilities, and regulatory agencies
- Formulate and execute operating budgets, fuel management, O&M, capital projects, and annual operating plans
- Drive continuous improvement in plant availability, heat rate, emissions, cost, safety metrics, and operational processes
- Establish and promote a culture of uncompromising safety, accountability, operational excellence, rapid execution, and collaboration
- Serve as the site leader and primary representative to the Memphis community, regulators, and stakeholders
- Recruit, develop, coach, and retain high-performing talent; manage staffing, resource allocation, and contractor oversight for both operations and construction

## BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

- Bachelor’s degree in mechanical, electrical, or other engineering discipline
- 8+ years of experience in power generation operations, plant management, or related industrial or aerospace operations
- 5+ years of leadership experience managing teams of operators, technicians, and engineers
- Experience operating or managing gas turbine power plants (simple cycle or combined cycle)

## PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

- Experience managing large-scale gas turbine facilities (100 MW+), preferably with high-availability critical power applications (data centers, industrial, or similar)
- Proven track record of achieving and sustaining high plant availability, reliability, and low forced outage rates
- Hands-on experience with plant construction, commissioning, start-up, and concurrent operations/expansion of gas turbine facilities
- Deep knowledge of gas turbine technology (aeroderivative and/or heavy-duty frames), performance optimization, emissions controls (SCR, etc.), and balance of plant systems
- Experience with high-voltage electrical systems, generators, switchgear, protection, and data center or industrial interconnection
- Strong understanding of environmental permitting, air quality compliance, and regulatory reporting for combustion turbines
- Experience in fast-paced, high-growth environments requiring simultaneous operations and major construction
- Demonstrated ability to manage budgets, fuel costs, contractors, and complex stakeholder relationships
- Excellent oral and written communication, leadership, and interpersonal skills
- Unfazed by major, abrupt changes in strategic direction or aggressive timelines
- Ability to work in a demanding, autonomously driven, start-up atmosphere

## ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

- Ability to support and supervise plant operations and construction outside of normal business hours, including nights, weekends, and on-call response
- Must be based at the Memphis, TN site
- Willingness to work extended hours as needed to support plant reliability and construction milestones
- General physical fitness required; ability to walk the plant site, access equipment, and work in industrial/outdoor environments (heat, noise, etc.)

SpaceXSI is an equal opportunity employer. For details on data processing, view our [Recruitment Privacy Notice](https://x.ai/legal/recruitment-privacy-notice).

## About xAI

## Company Overview
- **One‑liner**: xAI builds artificial intelligence systems to accelerate human scientific discovery and “understand the universe,” with products spanning frontier reasoning models, real‑time voice, and generative media.
- **Entity Type**: Private (last funding round: Series E, January 2026; acquired by SpaceX in February 2026)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, USA (additional offices in Seattle, WA; Memphis, TN; London, UK)
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Elon Musk

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI research, large language models, voice AI, generative media)
- Target customers: B2B (developers via API), B2C (consumers via Grok on 𝕏, SuperGrok subscriptions), Enterprise & Government (xAI for Government)
- Mission: “To understand the universe” – building AI that extends what humanity can know and do.

## Products & Services
- **Grok (base models)** : A conversational AI assistant modeled after *The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy*, available on the 𝕏 platform and via API.
- **Grok 4 / Grok 4 Heavy**: The most intelligent reasoning models, featuring native tool use and real‑time search integration (SuperGrok and Premium+ tiers).
- **Grok Voice Agent API / Voice Agent Builder**: Create custom voice agents in under two minutes (no‑code) – includes speech‑to‑text, text‑to‑speech, custom voice cloning, and multilingual support.
- **Grok Imagine API**: State‑of‑the‑art video generation API (quality, cost, latency).
- **Grok‑1.5 / Grok‑2 / Grok‑2 mini**: Earlier model releases with improved reasoning and 128K context length.
- **PromptIDE**: An integrated development environment for prompt engineering and interpretability research.
- **xAI for Government**: A suite of frontier AI products tailored for U.S. government customers.
- **Colossus Supercomputer**: 200,000‑GPU cluster built in 122 days, used for training xAI models; now also leased to Anthropic (Colossus 1 agreement).

All products are delivered as SaaS, API, and model weights (open‑source release of Grok‑1).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Funding**: 
  - Series B (May 2024): $6 B 
  - Series C (Dec 2024): $6 B (led by A16Z, BlackRock, Fidelity, Kingdom Holdings, Lightspeed, MGX, Morgan Stanley, OIA, QIA, Sequoia, Valor, Vy Capital, others)
  - Series E (Jan 2026): $20 B
  - Acquisition by SpaceX announced Feb 2, 2026 (terms not disclosed).
- **Key Metric**: Total disclosed funding ~$32 B; annual revenue not publicly available.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: A16Z, BlackRock, Fidelity, Sequoia Capital, Morgan Stanley, Kingdom Holdings, Lightspeed, MGX, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Anthropic (Colossus deal), U.S. Department of War (selected Dec 2025).
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Rapid scaling from founding to 200K‑GPU cluster in 122 days.
  - Over 214 open roles listed on Greenhouse as of mid‑2026.
  - #1 on Big Bench Audio (Grok 4 audio performance).
  - Expanded into voice agents, video generation, and government verticals within 3 years.
  - Acquisition by SpaceX signals deep integration with space‑tech resources.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Compute infrastructure**: Colossus supercomputer – one of the largest GPU clusters in existence, enabling faster training and larger models.
- **Model performance**: Grok 4 claims “most intelligent model in the world” with top benchmarks (Big Bench Audio #1).
- **Vertical integration**: Tight coupling with 𝕏 platform for data, distribution, and real‑time world knowledge.
- **Speed of execution**: “Move quickly and fix things” culture; built Colossus in 122 days.
- **Government contracts**: Early access to public‑sector AI markets (U.S. Department of War).
- **Talent density**: Small, focused team of researchers and engineers; in‑person work accelerates iteration.

## Strategic Focus
- **Continue advancing frontier reasoning** (Grok 4 Heavy, next‑gen models).
- **Expand voice and multimodal APIs** for developers (Voice Agent Builder, Custom Voices Library).
- **Deepen government / defense partnerships** (xAI for Government, Department of War).
- **Scale infrastructure** post‑acquisition via SpaceX resources.
- **Remain “open” where strategic** (open‑source release of Grok‑1 weights).

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Ambitious goals, fast execution” – rejects consensus in favor of first‑principles reasoning. In‑person work prioritized (Palo Alto, Seattle, Memphis, London).
- **Benefits**: 
  - Competitive cash + equity compensation.
  - Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, disability, life insurance.
  - 401(k) plan, fertility benefits, flexible vacation.
  - Visa sponsorship offered.
- **Engineering culture**: No recruiters for assessments – applications reviewed directly by technical team. Interview process: application → screening → technical interviews → offer.
- **Mission‑driven**: Opportunity to work on frontier AI models that aim to “advance humanity.”
- **Perks**: In‑person collaboration, fast‑paced environment, ownership of meaningful projects.

## Sources
1. [x.ai/company](https://x.ai/company)
2. [x.ai/careers](https://x.ai/careers)
3. [job-boards.greenhouse.io/xai](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/xai)
4. [x.ai/news](https://x.ai/news)
5. [x.ai/careers/open-roles](https://x.ai/careers/open-roles)

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