Design Manager - France

About The Role

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

Responsibilities

• Lead design delivery: Own high‑level, low‑level, and campus master‑planning design.
• 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 delivery of the data centre.
• Authorities: Lead the design permitting process, interfacing with local permitting bodies to ensure permitting constraints are met and permits for construction are granted.
• Ensure design quality & performance:
  • Guarantee Max IT capacity and SLA compliance.
  • Deliver efficiency targets (PUE, WUE).
  • Develop a design that meets permitting requirements.
  • Optimise design to meet Data4 and client SLA performance requirements.
• Define and optimise technical solutions:
  • Set equipment requirements with programme, delivery, and supply chain.
  • Optimise design to target cost metrics.
  • Drive modular/prefabricated design approaches.
• Select and validate vendors:
  • Support vendor selection.
  • Validate technical specifications.
• Support constructability:
  • Define construction methods.
  • Ensure design is buildable and aligned with delivery constraints.
• Coordinate commissioning readiness: Interface with commissioning requirements to define, review, and validate commissioning protocols for execution.
• Engage with customers & stakeholders:
  • Support technical discussions, engineering reviews, and the prospecting and contract negotiation stage.
  • Provide SME input for utility and permitting topics.
  • Lead technical validation with the client during the execution phase.
• Drive project alignment: Work with project controls and delivery to ensure schedule and cost adherence.

Responsibilities in Terms of IMS Certifications

• Health & Safety: 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 (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 (master‑planning through detailed design).

Technical Skills

• Data centre engineering and delivery constraints: CSA/MEP design integration, controls, networks, and power substation interfaces.
• Ability to make technical decisions based on Data4 product, client, and site‑specific requirements and coordinate with SMEs for deviations.
• 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 master‑planning, optimising against performance metrics (including PUE/WUE), Max IT capacity, risk, and speed.
• Demonstrated ability to combine technical and business skills to propose the right balance between technical specifications, cost, SLAs, and supply‑chain availability/delivery lead time.
• Cross‑functional management experience with a mid‑size team.

Behavioral Skills

• Good communication skills.
• Strong stakeholder management, negotiation, and conflict‑resolution skills.
• Structured problem‑solving.
• Makes and owns decisions.
• Rigour and a quality‑first mindset.