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 the campus design delivery. The role owns 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.

Responsibilities

• Lead design delivery: Own high‑level, low‑level, and campus masterplanning 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 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 construction are granted.
• Ensure design quality & performance:
  • Guarantee Max IT capacity and SLA compliance
  • Deliver efficiency targets (PUE, WUE)
  • Deliver a design that meets permitting requirements
  • Develop a design optimized to meet the Data4 and Client’s 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, 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

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