Design Manager, NA

📋 Description

• • As a Design Manager for North America at Vantage Data Centers, you will be the pivotal force driving the excellence, efficiency, and scalability of our data center designs across the region. This role is central to our Design Integration Group (DIG), acting as the primary liaison between strategic vision and on-the-ground execution. You will champion design quality, implement value engineering initiatives, proactively mitigate risks, and ensure seamless transitions from design to construction and ultimately to operations, all while rigorously upholding the stringent expectations of our hyperscale clients for unparalleled uptime, resilience, rapid deployment, and optimized total cost of ownership (TCO).
• • You will serve as the critical connective hub, orchestrating all design-related communications, tracking key milestones, and ensuring the timely delivery of all design documentation. This involves close collaboration with a diverse range of internal teams, including New Site Development, Product, Engineering, Construction, and Operations, as well as external partners such as architects, consultants, and specialty vendors. Your ability to foster strong working relationships and facilitate clear, consistent communication will be paramount to success.
• • A core responsibility will be to drive product standardization efforts in lockstep with the Product and Engineering teams. This ensures that our design solutions are not only optimized for current needs but are also inherently scalable and repeatable, forming the foundation for future growth and efficiency across our expanding portfolio.
• • You will represent the Design Management function in crucial project governance meetings, risk reviews, and executive update sessions. In these forums, you will provide data-backed insights into design performance, highlight potential challenges, and inform critical decision-making processes, ensuring that design considerations are at the forefront of project strategy.
• • Your leadership will extend to managing external architect and consultant teams, defining clear scopes of work, monitoring their performance, and ensuring their seamless integration into Vantage's internal workflows and standards. This includes overseeing the delivery of comprehensive design packages, encompassing drawings, specifications, calculations, BIM models, and essential design basis documentation.
• • You will lead the entire design lifecycle for hyperscale campuses, from the initial concept and schematic design phases through design development and the final Issued for Construction (IFC) documentation. This requires a deep understanding of large-scale critical infrastructure projects and the ability to manage complex, multi-disciplinary design efforts.
• • A significant aspect of your role will involve driving modular design principles, repeatability, and standardization strategies, with a strong emphasis on prefabrication techniques. This approach is crucial for accelerating deployment timelines and enhancing cost-effectiveness without compromising quality or performance.
• • You will be instrumental in coordinating regional design feedback loops, ensuring that lessons learned and insights gained from completed projects are systematically captured and used to refine and improve the next generation of product designs and company-wide design standards.
• • You will actively identify and champion value engineering (VE) opportunities, seeking ways to reduce project costs, shorten schedules, and minimize complexity while steadfastly maintaining or enhancing design resilience and performance.
• • Driving Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) metrics will be a key focus, including optimizing Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE), power density, and evaluating various redundancy trade-offs to achieve the most economically viable and operationally sound designs.
• • You will lead comprehensive design risk assessments, develop robust mitigation plans, and conduct rigorous quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) audits to ensure the highest standards are met throughout the design process.
• • Support will be provided for sequencing, schedule planning, and cost modeling, particularly for complex multi-wave campus builds, ensuring that design activities are tightly integrated with overall project timelines and budgets.
• • You will own the development and consistent reporting of design-related metrics and dashboards, providing clear visibility into project status, performance against KPIs, and areas for improvement.
• • Leading lessons learned sessions and implementing effective change management processes will be vital for capturing valuable insights and strengthening the predictability and success of future projects.
• • Partnering with data governance and project controls teams will ensure data accuracy, consistency, and traceability across the entire project portfolio, enabling better analysis and informed decision-making.
• • You will implement and continuously evolve project management tools, such as ClickUp, to enhance visibility, drive efficiency, and foster accountability across all involved teams.
• • You will promote and validate innovative execution strategies, including the integration of prefabricated MEP systems, skids, busways, advanced medium voltage distribution, microgrid readiness, liquid cooling enablement, and high-density design solutions.
• • Ensuring compliance with all relevant building codes, energy standards, safety regulations, sustainability goals, and utility requirements will be a non-negotiable aspect of your role.
• • Key deliverables include design packages that meet Vantage Data Centers (VDC) and operational standards, delivered on time and within budget, alongside documented and adopted Site Specific Owner’s Project Requirements (SSOPR), consistent milestone reporting, a well-defined project management framework, and a structured lessons learned repository.