1. Pre-sales technical leadership and customer engagement
• Lead technical discovery with customers to define business objectives, IT load profiles, availability targets, deployment phasing, site constraints, operating philosophy, sustainability goals, budget parameters, and schedule expectations.
• Convert customer requirements into a clear basis of design, design criteria, scope matrix, assumptions, exclusions, interfaces, and acceptance requirements.
• Develop concept and reference architectures for greenfield, brownfield, retrofit, high-density, and liquid-cooled data center deployments.
• Present solution concepts, trade-offs, performance, risks, and value propositions to customer technical teams, consultants, procurement stakeholders, and executive decision-makers.
• Coordinate technical responses for RFIs, RFPs, tenders, design workshops, value engineering reviews, and customer clarification meetings.
2. Integrated mechanical and electrical design
• Own the integrated design intent across mechanical and electrical disciplines, ensuring system architecture, equipment selection, controls, interfaces, and redundancy strategy work as one coordinated solution.
• Mechanical scope includes cooling architecture, chilled-water or condenser-water systems, liquid cooling systems, CDUs, heat rejection, pumps, piping, hydraulic design, water treatment, ventilation, containment, controls, and heat-reuse interfaces where applicable.
• Electrical scope includes utility and medium-voltage interfaces, transformers, switchgear, UPS, generators, PDUs, busway, grounding, protection philosophy, power distribution, controls, metering, and integration with critical mechanical loads.
• Review load calculations, capacity models, single-line diagrams, schematics, equipment schedules, layouts, sequences of operation, control narratives, technical specifications, and bills of quantities.
• Ensure designs address reliability, maintainability, constructability, modularity, future expansion, energy and water efficiency, safe operation, and lifecycle cost.
3. Solution costing, quotation and commercial support
• Translate the approved technical concept into an executable scope of supply and services for estimating and quotation.
• Work with sales, finance, procurement, supply chain, legal, and project teams to develop cost inputs, vendor budgets, engineering hours, schedule assumptions, contingencies, and commercial qualifications.
• Validate that quotations align with the technical solution, customer deliverables, performance commitments, warranty position, interfaces, exclusions, and project risk profile.
• Lead technical bid evaluations and value engineering without compromising safety, resilience, performance, compliance, or customer outcomes.
• Support contract and change-order reviews by clarifying technical obligations, acceptance criteria, dependencies, and impact on cost and schedule.
4. System integrator and vendor integration
• Act as the primary technical coordinator with system integrators, design firms, OEMs, equipment vendors, contractors, controls providers, and commissioning agents.
• Establish a clear responsibility and interface matrix covering design ownership, equipment boundaries, data exchange, controls, power, piping, communications, testing, documentation, and warranty.
• Lead vendor design reviews, technical submittal reviews, deviation management, interface resolution, and integration workshops.
• Assess vendor capability, solution maturity, technical compliance, manufacturability, delivery risk, service coverage, and commissioning readiness.
• Drive standardization of preferred architectures, specifications, design modules, approved components, and repeatable integration methods.
5. Project execution and design governance
• Maintain technical ownership from order award through detailed engineering, procurement, construction support, testing, and final handover.
• Establish and manage the design programme, deliverables register, design review gates, decision log, risk register, action tracker, and technical change-control process.
• Coordinate multidisciplinary design reviews and resolve clashes, gaps, constructability issues, and late changes before they affect site execution.
• Provide technical support during procurement, factory testing, installation, site queries, non-conformance resolution, and system start-up.
• Ensure accurate and timely drawings, specifications, calculations, submittals, method statements, inspection and test plans, operating procedures, and as-built documentation.
6. Testing, commissioning and handover
• Define the commissioning strategy and acceptance framework from the design stage, including factory acceptance, site acceptance, pre-functional checks, functional performance testing, integrated systems testing, and reliability demonstrations.
• Coordinate vendors and contractors to develop commissioning scripts, test prerequisites, roles, evidence requirements, issue-management processes, and customer witness plans.
• Verify that controls sequences, alarms, interlocks, failover modes, redundancy, and performance meet the approved design intent.
• Lead technical closure of punch-list items, performance gaps, and documentation deficiencies before handover.
• Support operational readiness through training, spares recommendations, maintenance strategy, asset data, operating manuals, and lessons learned.
7. Safety, quality, compliance and risk
• Embed safety in design and ensure compliance with applicable codes, standards, customer requirements, internal engineering practices, and local authority requirements.
• Lead technical risk reviews, design assurance, hazard identification, failure-mode reviews, and mitigation planning appropriate to project complexity.
• Maintain design quality through independent checks, document control, configuration management, design freeze discipline, and formal approval gates.
• Escalate material technical, safety, schedule, cost, supply, performance, or integration risks with clear options and recommendations.
8. Capability building and continuous improvement
• Develop reusable design guidelines, calculation tools, reference architectures, specifications, quotation templates, lessons learned, and commissioning standards.
• Maintain current knowledge of data center architectures, high-density compute, liquid cooling, energy systems, controls, codes, standards, and emerging technologies.
• Coach sales, application engineering, project, and partner teams on solution design, design governance, and technical risk management.
• Use project feedback and operational performance to improve future designs, vendor selections, cost position, delivery speed, and customer experience.