Design Management Director

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 set out the strategic 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 to ensure permitting constraints are met and ultimately ensure permits for construction are granted.
• Ensure design quality & performance:
  • Guarantee Max IT capacity and SLA compliance across the portfolio.
  • Deliver a strategy that ensures high quality and consistent design objectives are met.
  • Deliver to efficiency targets (PUE, WUE).
  • Develop a design optimized to meet the Data4 and Client’s SLA performance requirements.
• Define and optimise technical solutions:
  • Standardisation 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 meets commercial and technical objectives.
• Support constructability:
  • Define construction methods.
  • Ensure design is buildable and aligned with delivery constraints.
  • Implement 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 strategy to define, review, and validate commissioning protocols aligned for design execution.
• Engage with customers & stakeholders:
  • Lead the design interface strategy with other key stakeholders in the organization.
  • 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 health and safety rules.
• Respect and enforce environmental policies.
• Respect and enforce information security policies.
• 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; coordinate with SMEs as needed.
• 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 – 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.