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T. Michael Cornelia

Athens, GA · LinkedIn · Contact

Data center operations Director responsible for ~24% of Meta’s GPU fleet and power capacity. 13 years scaling Meta’s fleet from megawatts to gigawatts; deep operational ownership of GPU training and inference platforms — Zion, Grand Teton, SMC, MTIA, and NVIDIA GB200/GB300 GenAI clusters. Founded and led Meta’s data center AI Operations program — drove a 49% reduction in unplanned downtime and interruptions on training infrastructure and 70% on inference infrastructure in year one. Engineer → Director — engineer’s instincts paired with director-level strategic range.

Selected Impact

• Regional growth: Scaled South region 754 MW → 1,070 MW (+42%) in 18 months
• Reliability: Held South region unavailability below targets on training and inference platforms through a 6x scope increase (2025)
• Capacity throughput: Landed and provisioned 2,307 racks in 2024 at 2.2-day average (vs. 3.7-day fleet); 98.8% SLO (vs. 93.8% fleet)
• AI Operations program: Led a 49% reduction in training downtime/interruptions, 70% reduction in inference downtime, 180% improvement in diagnostic accuracy (2022)
• People: Top-quartile manager engagement scores (2025); promoted 3 individual contributors to Site Manager (2024-25)

Experience

Director, Global Operations — South Region

Meta Platforms, Inc. · 2025 – Present

Direct all site operations for Meta’s South region — ~24% of the global GPU fleet and total megawatts. Scaled the region 754 MW → 1,070 MW in 18 months (+42%) including a 500+ MW generative AI training cluster; on path to ~2,500 MW by 2027. Currently supporting the turn-up of Hyperion in Louisiana — Meta’s next-generation campus, the size of Manhattan and 5 GW at full build-out.

AI & GPU Infrastructure Operations

• Founded and lead Meta’s data center AI Operations program (2022) — drove 49% reduction in unplanned downtime and interruptions on training infrastructure and 70% reduction on inference infrastructure in year one; improved diagnostic accuracy 180%
• Operate GPU training and inference platforms across the South region; established the AI operations knowledge base, dashboards, and weekly leadership cadence adopted as the source of truth across the data center org
• Co-created the new hardware introduction process used for Grand Teton, MTIA (Meta Training and Inference Accelerator), NVIDIA GB200, and GB300 deployments
• Authored the unplanned-downtime alerting strategy and SEV0 incident response plan, institutionalizing incident response across the site operations org
• Launched cloud operations pilot across multiple public cloud providers (OCI, GCP), defining the support model for heterogeneous cloud infrastructure

New Region Turn-Up & Commissioning

• Delivered Meta’s first all-Turin server region on schedule — proving an accelerated capacity program targeting 80% reduction in fulfillment time
• Positioned 2,063 racks at rates up to 750 racks/week, single-day record of 200 racks
• Manage continuous turn-up pipeline across liquid-cooled facilities, rapid deployment structures, and leased data centers; 12+ concurrent new builds delivering 150–330 MW per quarter

Organizational Strategy & Workforce Planning

• Authored and globally deployed the Leadership Deployment Model — 9-month effort with HR and Legal enabling site operations to scale 3x (to ~10GW) without adding regional leadership headcount
• Led convergence of facilities and site operations risk frameworks into a unified Data Center Operations metrics dashboard — first shared operational data layer between the two orgs
• Co-authored ring-aligned restructuring proposal — shifted operations from per-site to infrastructure-ring-based model; 34% management reduction while scaling to gigawatt-class campuses

Capacity Planning & Risk Management

• Created region-level capacity delivery risk framework combining construction risk with operational signals into a unified executive dashboard
• Standardized capacity engineering processes, launched root cause corrective action (RCCA) framework, and established quarterly quality assessments
• Manage region against rack turn-up SLO (P90 < 5 days), redeployment SLO (P95 < 4 days), and decommission targets with per-site tracking

Government Relations & Community

• Represent Meta in state-level legislative advocacy for data center tax incentive preservation
• Graduate of Leadership North Carolina; maintain statewide network of leaders across public and private sectors
• Manage relationships with government officials, economic development authorities, and community organizations across eight states and growing

Director, Site Operations — Stanton Springs, GA

Meta Platforms, Inc. · 2022 – 2025

Directed site operations for Meta’s Stanton Springs (Newton County, GA) data center campus — one of the fastest-growing campuses in the fleet.

• Sponsored enterprise-wide Quality Metrics Workshop — multi-tier composite scoring framework retired legacy metrics; introduced LLM-based quality assessment of repair tickets
• Built operational excellence framework (1:1 templates, meeting cadences, analytics SOPs) adopted across all regions globally
• Launched diagnostic accuracy initiative — reduced repeat repairs, slowed headcount growth, and quantified cost impact to justify tooling investments
• Led insourcing business case analyzing contingent vs. FTE economics across 500+ positions, including staffing models for gigawatt-scale sites through 2030
• Built government and community relationships across Newton County and the state of Georgia

Data Center Operations Manager — Stanton Springs, GA

Meta Platforms, Inc. · 2018 – 2022

Managed infrastructure operations teams at Meta’s Stanton Springs campus during a period of rapid expansion and new building commissioning.

• Owned all capacity-related projects across the campus as it went from dirt to provisioning, including new building commissioning and expansion phases
• Directed the turn-up of the largest known NVIDIA A100 GPU neural network at the time; followed by the largest known H100 GPU neural network
• Managed cross-functional coordination across construction, production operations, and headquarters teams for turn-up, turn-down, and retrofit execution
• Developed operational processes and standards subsequently adopted at other sites
• Mentored individual contributors across multiple technical teams

Data Center Operations Manager — Forest City, NC

Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook) · 2013 – 2018

Led infrastructure teams at Meta’s North Carolina campus during rapid fleet expansion.

• Owned all capacity-related projects across the campus, including commissioning of the site’s third data center building
• Managed cross-functional coordination across construction, production operations, and headquarters teams for turn-up, turn-down, and retrofit execution
• Developed capacity processes adopted fleet-wide; mentored individual contributors across multiple teams
• Built local government and community engagement relationships at city and county levels

Earlier Career

Systems Engineer & Architect — SUM/IT Systems · 2004 – 2013
Designed and deployed systems solutions (Unix, Linux, VMware, Solaris, Windows Server) for SMB customers. Co-created the company’s cloud offering and managed full customer lifecycle from scoping through long-term support.

VP, Operations & Information Systems — The School Box, Inc. · 2000 – 2013
Directed technology operations for a multi-state retailer (~400 employees). Managed all infrastructure, partnered with CEO/CFO on strategy and budgets, and built the organization’s primary technical strategy and knowledge management platform.

Core Competencies

Data Center Operations · Hyperscale Infrastructure · GPU Fleet Operations · AI/ML Training Clusters · New Site Commissioning · Liquid Cooling · Capacity Planning & Delivery · SLO Management · Agentic AI for Operations · Multi-Cloud (OCI, AWS, GCP) · Colocation Management · Workforce Strategy · Organizational Design · Quality Systems · Operational Excellence · Legislative Advocacy · Government Affairs · Community Development

Education & Certifications