Don Mitchell
Mission Critical Division Manager, Victaulic & Cooling Environments Project Co-Lead, Open Compute ProjectDon’s brings 30+ years of mission critical operations and design experience to his work with Open Compute Project. Starting his career as a nuclear engineer on submarines, he subsequently advanced multiple engineering programs for the US Navy ordnance & missile system reliability programs, retiring with the rank of Commander, US Navy – Reserves.
In the data center industry, Don has held leadership positions in systems engineering and cloud scale deployment of ITE systems with APC, Schneider, and Eaton. Since 2016, his focus has been cooling solutions and “mission critical” distribution of liquids in and around data centers as Mission Critical Division Lead for Victaulic.
Within OCP, in 2020 Don was instrumental in launching and co-leading the Advanced Cooling Facilities (ACF) sub project and subsequently the Cooling Environments Project. In 2023, Don launched the OCP workstream around “TCS @ Cloud Scale” collecting global input on best practices and guidance in deploying liquid to rack distribution efficiently at scale, optimizing sustainability, adaptability and minimizing cost and risk.
In addition to qualifications in submarines and nuclear engineering officer, Don earned degrees in Mechanical Engineering (US Naval Academy), MBA (City University), Masters in IT (Florida Institute of Technology); qualifications as a Professional Engineer (WA), Nuclear Submarine Officer and Airborne Paratrooper.
