Design Management Director

DATA4'S MISSION

DATA4 creates Smart & Scalable digital facilities for our customers. Our network of highly connected, resilient and sustainable data center campuses underpins our customers’ digital growth in Europe.

DATA4 Group finances, designs, constructs and operates its own data centers. Delivered through our data center campus model, we provide our customers with secure, scalable and high-performance data hosting solutions.

DATA4 VALUES

At DATA4 we are driven by our values. These are the core of everything we do – from the proactivity we show in delivering great outcomes for our clients, to the responsibility we show as a key contributor to the digital economy. Our three values are:

1. To be entrepreneurial – we are teams of doers who make things happen - with autonomy, energy and a sense of responsibility
2. To always take responsibility – for our impact on the people we work with, the society we are part of, and the environment in which we operate
3. To constantly be adaptable – our business is designed to adapt, answering not only today’s challenges, but also anticipating what’s coming next.

ABOUT THE ROLE

The Design Director is responsible for the Design Management Function delivering design implementation across all of Data4’s data centre developments. The Design Management Function is accountable for the end-to-end design of data centres and campus infrastructure projects, ensuring solutions meet Data4’s design standards, customer requirements, programme constraints, and Data4 quality and performance standards.

The Design Director will take a leadership position within the Data4 Global Infrastructure team to lead the Global implementation of design, with the support of individual development design managers and interfacing with the other key stakeholders across the organization. As such the role also leads the design organization, focusing on people management, standardization, process, reporting, risk management, and escalation.

The function owns the campus design delivery, the cross organizational design quality, acting as the technical authority across key disciplines (CSA, MEP, controls, networks, and power substation), and drives design decisions that balance technical performance, economics, schedule, and supply chain availability.

The position can be based in any of our offices in France, Italy, Spain, Poland or Germany.  

RESPONSIBILITIES

Lead the design delivery function: Own high-level, low-level, and campus masterplanning design delivered through various design managers. Proactively sets out the straegic implementation of the design delivery both internally and with supply chain.

Act as technical authority: Provide product implementation expertise across CSA, MEP, controls, networks, and power substations.

Client: Interface with the Client during the sales cycle and during the delivery of the data centre.

Authorities: Lead the design permitting process, interfacing with local permitting bodies ensuring permitting constraints are met, and ultimately ensuring permits for construciton are granted.

Ensure design quality & performance:

• Guarantee Max IT capacity and SLA compliance are delivered across the portfolio
• Deliver a strategy which ensures high quality and consistent design objectives are met.
• Deliver to efficiency targets (PUE, WUE)
• Develop a design which is optimized to meet the Data4 and Client’s SLA performance requirements

Define and optimise technical solutions:

• Standaisation of program, delivery and supply chain structure
• Optimise design to target cost metrics
• Drive modular / prefabricated design approaches

Select and validate vendors:

• Lead design consultant vendor selection
• Maintain high quality relationships with the vendor base
• Ensure the vendor base is meeting our commercial and technical objectives

Support constructability:

• Define construction methods
• Ensure design is buildable and aligned with delivery constraints
• Implementation of construction review strategy to ensure design requirements are met
• Act as a point of escalation for design related matters

Coordinate commissioning readiness: Interface with commissioning stategy to Define, review, and validate commissioning protocols are aligned for design for execution

Engage with customers & stakeholders:

• Lead the design interface strategy with other key stakeholders in the organisation
• Support technical discussions, engineering reviews and the prospecting and contract negotiation stage
• Provide SME input for utility and permitting topics
• Support technical validation with the Client during the execution phase

Drive project alignment: Work with project controls and delivery to ensure schedule and cost adherence

RESPONSIBILITES IN TERMS OF IMS CERTIFICATIONS

Respect and enforce certification policies in terms of:

• H&S: Respect and enforce health and safety rules.
• Environment: Respect and enforce environmental policies.
• Information security: Respect and enforce information security policies
• Energy: Respect and enforce the policy of reducing energy consumption.

REQUIREMENTS

Education and experience

• Technical Design Engineering experience (E.g. Electrical, Mechanical, Architectural, ICT, Civil/Structural Engineering)
• More than 5 years’ experience in data centres
• Proven experience leading multi-discipline design scopes across campus and data hall infrastructure (masterplanning through detailed design).

Technical skills

• Data centre engineering and delivery constraints: CSA / MEP design integration, Controls, networks (as relevant to DC infrastructure), and power substation interfaces
• Ability to make technical decisions based on Data4 product, Clients and site specific requirements. Coordination with SME’s as needed for specific deviations and high level expertise.
• Commissioning concepts, protocol definition and execution readiness
• Ability to define and validate equipment technical requirements, specifications and vendor submittals.
• Understanding of balanced commercial objectives of a data centre masterplanning - Ability to optimise designs against performance metrics (including PUE/WUE), MaxIT capacity, risk and speed.
• Demonstrated ability to combine technical and business skills to propose the right balance between technical specifications, cost, , speed SLAs and supply chain availability / delivery lead time.
• Cross functional management experience with a mid-size team

Behavioral skills

• Highly accountable mindset
• Proactive self starter
• Good communication skills
• Strong stakeholder management, negotiation and conflict-resolution skills
• Structured problem-solving
• Makes and owns decisions
• Rigour, and a quality-first mindset

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