Full-Time

Operations Manager

TAR

TAR

11-50 employees

Off-grid power plants for AI data centers

No salary listed

Austin, TX, USA

In Person

The description says the role is based in San Francisco, conflicting with the raw ATS location of Austin.

Category
Operations & Logistics
Required Skills
Inventory Management
Robotics

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Requirements
  • At least 4 years of experience in an operational role such as workshop, laboratory, facility, manufacturing, or field operations.
  • A track record of owning projects end to end, from an ambiguous request through a delivered result.
  • Comfort with hands-on work, including moving equipment, assembling benches, and fixing things directly.
  • Experience coordinating contractors, vendors, and service providers, including negotiating scope and holding them to schedule.
  • Strong organization and follow-through across many parallel threads, with clear, direct communication with engineers and outside parties.
  • Sound judgment and bias for action in low-structure situations, including finding the fastest safe path and executing it.
Responsibilities
  • Run the day-to-day operations of the San Francisco office and robotics facility, keeping the workshop organized, stocked, and safe.
  • Own tools and equipment end to end, including purchasing, on-site availability, maintenance, and repair.
  • Coordinate contractors and vendors for facility buildout, maintenance, and specialized work from scoping and scheduling through completion and payment.
  • Source parts, chase deliveries, handle receiving and returns, and resolve obstacles between engineers and their next test.
  • Run purchasing and inbound and outbound logistics for the robotics program, including shipments between San Francisco and the West Texas site.
  • Set and maintain shop safety practices, including training, personal protective equipment, signage, and housekeeping, in a facility with heavy machines under test.
  • Build lightweight processes for inventory, asset, and spend tracking.
  • Own operational special projects end to end, from facility improvements to new equipment installations, defining scope and driving them to completion.
Desired Qualifications
  • Operations experience at a hardware, robotics, or manufacturing startup.
  • Familiarity with shop equipment and basic environmental, health, and safety practices for a workshop with heavy machinery.
  • Experience with purchasing, inventory, or asset-tracking systems and spend tooling.
  • Forklift certification or experience rigging and moving heavy equipment.

TAR builds and operates behind-the-meter power plants for AI data centers that cannot wait out a utility interconnection queue. The company designs islanded microgrids pairing solar, battery storage, and gas peakers, then manufactures, installs, and runs them, handling power electronics, microgrid controls, dispatch software, and site construction in-house. Compared with grid interconnection, which can take years to clear, an off-grid plant can be sited and energized on the developer's own schedule, and TAR says it is working with a large compute provider and targets 5 GW by 2028. Its goal is to remove power as the constraint on AI buildout by owning generation end to end.

Company Size

11-50

Company Stage

Seed

Total Funding

$27M

Headquarters

Texas

Founded

N/A

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Forbes reported TAR raised $27 million in June 2026 at a $500 million valuation.
  • Pat Becker said TAR already targets over 200MW in 2027 and several gigawatts in 2028.
  • AI data centers face five-to-seven-year interconnection queues, making TAR's speed proposition urgent.

What critics are saying

  • TAR still lacks a public customer name, exposing extreme concentration risk around one neocloud.
  • Natural-gas backup and local permitting trigger regulatory delays, especially for multi-state site builds.
  • If the first 10MW deployment slips, TAR's 2027 200MW plan loses credibility fast.

What makes TAR unique

  • TAR uses factory-prefabricated behind-the-meter power systems, cutting deployments to roughly three months.
  • Its mix of solar, batteries, wind, and gas backup targets 24/7 AI data center power.
  • Pat Becker says TAR prices below typical behind-the-meter PPAs while avoiding grid queues.

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Benefits

Meal Benefits

Unlimited Paid Time Off

Health Insurance

Dental Insurance

Vision Insurance

Relocation Assistance

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

0%

1 year growth

0%

2 year growth

0%
Business Insider
Jun 29th, 2026
Creator economy founders pivot to data centers, raise $27M at $500M valuation to power AI infrastructure

Leonhard Soenke and Patrice Becker, who founded creator economy startup Throne in 2021, have pivoted to launch TAR (Transformative American Resources), a data centre energy startup. The company recently raised $27 million in seed funding at a $500 million valuation from an undisclosed strategic investor. TAR aims to reduce time-to-token for AI models by building modular, behind-the-meter energy systems combining solar, batteries, wind and natural gas. Soenke told Business Insider the shift came from seeking larger impact opportunities, as the creator economy has matured and become crowded. The founders spent six months transitioning Throne to trusted team members before relocating from New York to San Francisco and Austin to pursue the data centre opportunity.

Forbes
Jun 15th, 2026
Startup Raises $27 Million To Solve Two Massive Data Center Problems

Data centers are noisy and power-hungry. This startup might have a solution that prioritizes off-grid renewable energy.