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Equinix

Global data center, colocation, interconnection provider

Vice President Public Policy & Government Affairs

Full-TimeUpdated on 10/2/2026
$272k - $408k/yr+ Bonus + Equity
Expert
Washington, DC, USA+1 moreMore locations: Redwood City, CA, USA
HybridHybrid work is required.

About the job

Requirements
  • At least 10 years of experience in a senior leadership role within Public Policy and Government Affairs.
  • Experience leading a globally diverse team and delivering outcomes across jurisdictions.
  • Experience leading an organization through transformation.
  • Experience serving as a strategic partner to the business, preferably in the technology or data center sector.
  • Strong leadership skills in motivating a team and delivering on team objectives as a unified team with one voice.
  • Highly evolved commercial sensibility.
  • Executive presence and the ability to influence at the senior vice president level and above.
  • Ability to standardize global policies while translating them for local complexities.
  • Ability to balance intense short-term pressures with overall long-term goals.
  • Ability to inspire behavior change through motivating teams, planning initiatives, designating priorities, and making decisive choices in ambiguous situations.
  • Focus on execution and results, including establishing high performance standards, setting goals, developing plans, following through, and holding people accountable for results.
Responsibilities
  • Serve as a regular strategic advisor to the Board of Directors, Executive Chair, CEO, Executive Team, and Senior Vice Presidents on public policy, regulatory, geopolitical, and government-related risks and opportunities.
  • Engage Board members and executive leadership to shape enterprise-level responses to government, regulatory, community, and geopolitical challenges affecting company strategy, investment decisions, and growth.
  • Partner with Regional Presidents, Managing Directors, Legal, Corporate Communications, Strategy, Sustainability, and other senior leaders to align public policy and government engagement with business objectives.
  • Represent the company externally as the senior voice on public policy and government affairs.
  • Lead the development of a coherent, multi-year global Public Policy and Government Affairs strategy aligned with corporate and regional strategies.
  • Apply systems thinking to understand interdependencies across geopolitics, regulation, infrastructure, energy, technology, capital investment, and community sentiment, and translate insights into actionable strategies.
  • Establish enterprise-wide frameworks connecting geopolitical trends, regulatory developments, and policy risk to business planning, site selection, capital allocation, and market entry decisions.
  • Assess the external environment to identify emerging threats and opportunities and adapt strategy to the shifting political, regulatory, and geopolitical landscape.
  • Anticipate and interpret global geopolitical, regulatory, and legislative developments and assess their impact on company strategy, operations, supply chains, and growth plans.
  • Design and execute offensive and defensive public policy and regulatory strategies.
  • Lead coordinated engagement with governments at international, national, state, and local levels, including executive branches, legislatures, regulators, and utilities.
  • Guide the company’s approach to community engagement and government relations to secure support for development, operations, and long-term presence in key markets.
  • Build, develop, and lead a high-performing global Public Policy and Government Affairs organization.
  • Translate strategy into priorities, operating models, and execution plans while ensuring consistent regional implementation with local nuance.
  • Empower senior Public Policy and Government Affairs leaders to execute effectively while maintaining alignment with enterprise strategy.
  • Evolve organizational design, capabilities, and resource allocation to address material risks and opportunities.
  • Lead the Public Policy and Government Affairs function within the Legal Department in partnership with Legal leadership and cross-functional teams.
  • Establish governance, processes, and metrics to track strategic progress and ensure transparency with executive leadership.
  • Oversee Public Policy and Government Affairs budgets and external spending, ensuring disciplined investment aligned with strategic priorities and risk mitigation.
  • Build connections with legal and regulatory capabilities and drive a commercially grounded approach across public policy, compliance, advocacy, and stakeholder engagement.
  • Serve as an internal and external thought leader on public policy, regulation, and geopolitics as they intersect with digital infrastructure, energy, sustainability, and technology.
  • Shape and articulate policy positions reflecting the company’s values, long-term vision, and business needs.
  • Provide clear, concise, and forward-looking insights to senior leadership to enable informed decision-making during uncertainty and change.
Desired Qualifications
  • Cross-functional experience, such as leading regulatory and compliance strategies and teams.
  • Experience as a strategic partner to the business, preferably in the technology or data center sector.

About the company

Equinix provides data center space, colocation, interconnection, and cloud services for businesses worldwide. Customers rent space in Equinix data centers and use the company’s interconnected ecosystem to link networks, cloud platforms, and applications with low latency. Its global footprint and an ecosystem of thousands of customers create direct connections that simplify digital infrastructure, setting it apart from providers that only offer space. The goal is to help businesses run reliable digital operations and pursue multi-cloud strategies through secure data-center space and connected networks.

Company Size

10,001+

Company Stage

IPO

Headquarters

Redwood City, California

Founded

1998

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Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Q2 2026 revenue rose 16% to $2.625 billion; guidance increased to $10.285 billion.
  • Q2 2026 added a record 9,700 interconnections, showing ecosystem demand remains strong.
  • AtNorth closed September 2, 2026, giving Equinix Nordic expansion and AI-ready capacity.

What critics are saying

  • Secaucus NY2 spilled 5,000 gallons diesel on September 11, 2026; regulators are investigating.
  • Cape Town activists appealed Equinix's 174 MVA project on water, power, and emissions.
  • Net leverage was 3.6x in Q2 2026; $5 billion-$6 billion capex strains balance sheet.

What makes Equinix unique

  • Equinix Fabric now reaches Comcast last-mile connectivity, speeding enterprise orders.
  • Equinix Inference Exchange with NVIDIA and Together AI launches Q1 2027.
  • HK6, MB3, and DB7x expand Equinix's liquid-cooled, metro-edge AI footprint.

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Benefits

Health care and counseling plans

Paid vacations and holidays

Programs and resources for family needs

Programs to build financial security, make donations, and seek additional education

Some countries offer flexible employee stock purchase plan

Growth & Insights and Company News

Headcount

6 month growth

↑ 0%

1 year growth

↑ 0%

2 year growth

↑ 0%
Yahoo Finance
Sep 29th, 2026
Colombia's data center IT capacity to exceed 200 MW by 2031, with Bogotá commanding 98% of market

A new market analysis reports Colombia's data centre IT capacity is expected to exceed 200 MW by 2031, representing nearly four times current installed capacity. The study covers 25 operational facilities and 10 upcoming projects across Barranquilla, Bogotá, Cali and Medellín. Bogotá dominates the market, accounting for over 98% of the country's total data centre capacity. Leading operators include ODATA, Equinix, Cirion Technologies and KIO Networks. Most existing facilities are designed to Tier III standards. The database provides facility-level intelligence including white-floor space, IT load capacity, and retail and wholesale colocation pricing. It is designed to support investment planning, competitive benchmarking and business development for data centre operators, construction contractors, infrastructure providers and investors tracking Colombia's digital infrastructure market through 2031.

EBNewsDaily
Sep 28th, 2026
"We were never consulted" - Cape Town residents challenge Equinix data centre.

"We were never consulted" - Cape Town residents challenge Equinix data centre. The Housing Assembly's Kenneth Matlawe hosted a panel discussion about the impact of data centres with Mohammad Amir Anwar from the University of Edinburgh and Pitso Tsibolane and Timothy Carr from the University of Cape Town. Photo: Alice Scott * About 70 activists and community representatives attended a panel discussion about the possible impact of a proposed hyperscale data centre in Cape Town. * The application to rezone King Air Industria was approved by the Municipal Planning Tribunal on 14 July. * The approval is temporarily halted as local activists and residents appeal it. Bishop Lavis community leader Michael Hoffmeester lives less than three kilometres from the site of where a hyperscale data centre has been proposed for Cape Town. He said he has been struggling to answer questions from the community about the data centres. The little information they have received about the facility, Hoffmeester said, has been technical and complex. "We cannot understand them," Hoffmeester said. "How can I explain to the community what we were told if I don't even understand it?" Hoffmeester joined about 70 activists and representatives from communities surrounding the proposed site at a meeting hosted by the Housing Assembly at the Central Methodist Church on Saturday. Also in attendance were members of non-profit organisations such as Open Secrets and Foxglove, the Legal Resources Centre, the South African Human Rights Commission and Green Anglicans. Communities surrounding the proposed data centre include the Barcelona informal settlement, Bishop Lavis, Gugulethu and KTC, where some residents still battle daily with unreliable access to water and electricity. The application for rezoning, subdivision, consolidation and amendment of conditions, which paves the way for one, possibly two, data centres, was approved by the Municipal Planning Tribunal on 14 July. Activists and residents lodged a formal appeal in August against the land use approval that will allow US technology company Equinix to build a data centre at King Air Industria. They say the application should have been rejected because of inadequate information about the data centre's impact on surrounding communities, in particular on electricity and water resources, as well as emissions and noise. The appeal has legally suspended the approval until the formal internal appeal process has been completed. Hoffmeester told the meeting on Saturday that he and other Bishop Lavis residents were never consulted about the project. Hoffmeester suggested that the land for the project be used for housing or to create a recreational area for young people. Pitso Tsibolane, a senior lecturer in information systems at UCT, said, "We just survived loadshedding... For over a decade, you and I had to battle through a full day without guaranteed electricity, and in some households, for days and weeks even. Suddenly, we have enough electricity to power all of these data centres." Some panellists challenged the suggestion that data centres would bring jobs to the surrounding communities. University of Edinburgh senior lecturer Mohammad Amir Anwar said that based on his research, he roughly estimated that the proposed Equinix facility would create only about 120 jobs directly at the construction phase and 40 once it is running. Several activists raised concerns about the prioritisation of such a facility over housing. The Housing Assembly's Kashiefa Achmat said the lack of easy-to-understand information about the centre is concerning. She said they are campaigning for a moratorium on data centre development until there is a better understanding and commitment on how communities' rights and concerns will be taken into account. (C) 2026 GroundUp. This article is published under the GroundUp Republication Licence Version 1.0. Email [email protected] to request permission to republish.

Watchlist News
Sep 27th, 2026
Promising Real Estate stocks to add to your watchlist - september 27th.

Promising Real Estate stocks to add to your watchlist - september 27th. Equinix, Realty Income, and Welltower are the three Real Estate stocks to watch today, according to MarketBeat's stock screener tool. Real estate stocks are shares of publicly traded companies that own, develop, manage, or finance income-producing properties such as apartments, offices, warehouses, or shopping centers. They commonly include real estate investment trusts (REITs), which may distribute much of their rental income to shareholders as dividends, but their prices can still fluctuate with interest rates, property values, and broader market conditions. These companies had the highest dollar trading volume of any Real Estate stocks within the last several days. Equinix (EQIX). Realty Income (O). Discover more Compare Index ETFs Access Premium News Realty Income, The Monthly Dividend Company, is an S&P 500 company and member of the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats index. Watch List News invest in people and places to deliver dependable monthly dividends that increase over time. The company is structured as a real estate investment trust ("REIT"), and its monthly dividends are supported by the cash flow from over 15,450 real estate properties (including properties acquired in the Spirit merger in January 2024) primarily owned under long-term net lease agreements with commercial clients. Welltower (WELL). Welltower Inc. (NYSE:WELL), a real estate investment trust ("REIT") and S&P 500 company headquartered in Toledo, Ohio, is driving the transformation of health care infrastructure. Welltower invests with leading seniors housing operators, post-acute providers and health systems to fund the real estate infrastructure needed to scale innovative care delivery models and improve people's wellness and overall health care experience.

The Japan Times
Sep 20th, 2026
Data center command hub keeps AI up and running.

Data center command hub keeps AI up and running. SHARE/SAVE Sep 20, 2026 Singapore - A steady nerve is crucial when keeping watch over hundreds of data centers worldwide, facilities essential to the frictionless online banking, messaging and AI services that society relies on. Analysts sit surrounded by digital maps and dashboards at the Singapore command center of U.S. firm Digital Realty, a major global operator of the warehouse-like sites filled with whirring servers. The goal is not simply to react when something breaks, but to detect warning signs, such as a sudden rise in temperature, early enough to prevent disruption. Daniel Naing, 37, and his colleagues handle thousands of system alerts flagging signs of trouble each week. "If I panic, my team members will panic. So even though inside I may be nervous, I cannot show it," he said. The command center and its two sister hubs, in Europe and the United States, provide round-the-clock oversight of more than 300 data centers across six continents. Digital Realty rents its server space to around 6,000 companies big and small, with power disruptions and equipment failure the most common issues faced. There are also detailed protocols for earthquakes and typhoons, and an approaching storm thousands of kilometers away is enough to put the team on standby. Booming demand for data centers is a political hot potato in many places, as tech companies race to develop artificial intelligence tools that require massive amounts of computing power. But without them "nothing works" in our high-tech world, said Serene Nah, managing director and head of Asia Pacific at Digital Realty. Data centers are essential infrastructure - a matter "almost like national security", she said. "We need to be up running all the time." Nah said, however, that "our business is very misunderstood" and has little support from the public, who believe data centers emit "a lot of carbon or heat" or "use up a lot of water." "Yet everyone's scrolling their phones every day," and for each swipe "the data needs to go somewhere." The company is prioritising renewable energy such as solar panels and closed-loop server cooling systems that continuously recycle water, Nah said. The vulnerabilities of the sector were highlighted this year, when data centers run by Amazon's cloud arm were struck during the Middle East war. Data centers operate 24 hours a day, so Naing and his colleagues take the 7 am to 7 pm shift in Singapore before handing over to Europe. Engineers must attend to an alert within minutes. The teams liaise with those on the ground and call on a global network of experts to help, while keeping clients updated. Digital Realty is one of the biggest providers of data center server space along with rivals like Equinix, also a U.S. company. Meanwhile tech giants from Microsoft to Alibaba are racing to build their own data centers to train and run AI models - part of a global buildout costing trillions of dollars. Digital Realty's Global Command Center in Singapore is housed inside one of three data centers that the company runs in the city-state. Most areas of the data center, whose roof is lined with solar panels, are off-limits for security reasons. But one room available for viewing has rows of black server cabinets formed long, narrow corridors, with bundles of yellow cables running overhead and the computer servers' high-velocity fans emitting a soft hum. AI is accelerating the growth and complexity of data centers, but for operations at the command center, humans remain indispensable, said Terence Tang, head of the Asia Pacific global command center. "We still need human intervention to really look at whether or not those are genuine outages, genuine alerts and alarms, because sometimes AI or automation can give you false positives," Tang said. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever. By subscribing, you can help us get the story right.

Rest of World
Sep 17th, 2026
South Africa demands moratorium on US data center expansion over water and energy concerns

Civil rights groups in South Africa are protesting American data centre expansion, marking one of the continent's first coordinated efforts to slow AI infrastructure development. Housing Assembly and UK nonprofit Foxglove filed a legal challenge against two Equinix facilities in Cape Town, calling for a moratorium on hyperscale data centres until stricter transparency rules are implemented. The groups say Equinix's proposed 174-megawatt facilities would consume over 4.4 billion litres of water annually—equivalent to 18,000 homes—in already water-stressed South Africa. Microsoft has committed $300 million by 2027 to expand its digital and AI infrastructure in South Africa, whilst Amazon Web Services will invest $1.5 billion until 2029. Similar concerns have emerged in Kenya regarding a proposed 1-gigawatt data centre by G42 and Microsoft, which stalled partly due to power concerns.