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Associate Director - Data Centre / Mission Critical Infrastructure
The Connected Co
Abu Dhabi, UAE
Full-time
Director
Onsite
Discovered 1 months ago
Data centre designMission-critical infrastructureDesign managementCritical MEP systemsHV/LV power distributionUPS and standby generation
Role Overview
An experienced Associate Director – Design Management will provide senior technical leadership across data centre and mission-critical infrastructure developments.
The role establishes the design management function, technical standards, governance, and assurance, and supports project delivery from concept through handover.
Key Skills for This Role
Data centre designMission-critical infrastructureDesign managementCritical MEP systemsHV/LV power distributionUPS and standby generation
Full Job Posting
Role overview
An experienced Associate Director – Design Management will provide senior technical leadership across data centre and mission-critical infrastructure developments.
The role establishes the design management function, technical standards, governance, and assurance, and supports project delivery from concept through handover.
Design leadership and delivery
- Lead design management across current and future data centre projects and continuously improve standards, reference designs, requirements, and documentation.
- Develop Basis of Design documents and align project designs with organisational, regulatory, customer, operational, and performance requirements.
- Translate capacity, resilience, sustainability, and future expansion needs into design requirements.
- Manage feasibility, concept, detailed design, IFC, construction support, commissioning, and handover.
- Manage design programmes, reviews, submissions, approvals, milestones, deliverables, and design change control.
Coordination and technical assurance
- Lead appointments and performance management for architects, consultants, specialist advisors, OEMs, and technical partners.
- Coordinate civil, structural, architectural, mechanical, electrical, ICT, security, commissioning, and specialist disciplines.
- Lead technical workshops, design reviews, assurance processes, and interface resolution.
- Oversee BIM and digital design, model coordination, clash detection, information exchange, and project information requirements.
- Provide oversight of HV/LV distribution, UPS, standby generation, cooling, BMS, fire protection, and associated critical systems.
Performance and stakeholder engagement
- Ensure designs incorporate suitable redundancy, resilience, capacity, maintainability, and operational readiness.
- Monitor energy and water efficiency and incorporate sustainability and green-building objectives.
- Lead value engineering and optimisation without compromising safety, reliability, resilience, scalability, or performance.
- Maintain design risk registers and provide technical input to feasibility, investment assessment, due diligence, and new opportunities.
- Engage customers on technical needs and represent development in technical discussions, design reviews, and approvals.
- Coordinate with development, project management, operations, technology, finance, legal, and investment teams; ensure complete handover documentation.
Technical skills
- Strong knowledge of data centre and mission-critical design, critical MEP systems, resilience, redundancy, capacity planning, power density, maintainability, and operational readiness.
- Experience with design management, multidisciplinary coordination, BIM, digital engineering, technical assurance, change management, and design governance.
- Knowledge of international standards and practice, including Uptime Institute Tier requirements, TIA-942, ISO standards, and applicable regulations.
- Commercial awareness and ability to lead value engineering and assess technical design cost and business implications.
- Knowledge of sustainability, energy efficiency, PUE, WUE, and green-building principles.
Education and experience
- Bachelor's degree in electrical, mechanical, civil/structural engineering, or another relevant engineering or technical discipline.
- Approximately 10–15 years of progressive engineering design, design management, or technical leadership experience.
- Demonstrated delivery of complex data centre or mission-critical projects across multiple design and delivery stages.
- Experience with Basis of Design documents, technical standards, multidisciplinary teams, critical power and cooling, and design consultants.
- Experience in hyperscale, colocation, enterprise data centre, or similarly complex infrastructure environments.
- Experience with due diligence, feasibility, risk management, value engineering, cost optimisation, and direct technical stakeholder engagement.
Preferred qualifications
- Chartered Engineer status or equivalent professional engineering accreditation is highly desirable.
- CDCP, CDCS, Uptime Institute accreditation, Arabic language capability, and owner-side or client-side design management experience are desirable or advantageous.
- Strong written and verbal English communication skills are specified.
Additional note
Nationals are encouraged to apply.
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