Hybrid Design Manager

at Vantage Data Centers

• Job title: Design Manager
• Job type: Full Time
• Experience level: Senior, Lead
• Salary: $130,000 - $140,000 per year
• Degree requirement: Bachelor's Degree
• Location requirements: Hybrid, Ashburn, United States

About the role

• Design Manager for Vantage Data Centers overseeing data center design and collaboration across teams. Leading the design process and ensuring quality delivery for hyperscaler clients.

Responsibilities

• Act as the connective hub coordinating all design-related communication, milestones, and deliverables across Development, Engineering, Construction, and Operations.
• Drive product standardization efforts in collaboration with the Product and Engineering teams, ensuring design solutions are both optimized and scalable.
• Represent Design Management in project governance, risk reviews, and executive updates, providing data-backed insight into performance and decision-making.
• Collaborate with Construction, Procurement, Telecom, Power, Security, Controls, Commissioning, and Operations teams.
• Manage RFI resolution, design clarifications, change controls, drawing revisions, and design risk escalations.
• Lead concept → schematic → design development → IFC (Issued for Construction) design phases for hyperscale campuses (50–500+ MW portfolios).
• Lead external architect and consultant teams, ensuring clear scope definition, performance management, and integration into internal workflows.
• Oversee design milestone delivery, reporting progress against defined KPIs including cost per MW, design cycle time, and change volume.
• Coordinate regional design feedback loops to improve the next generation of product and design standards.
• Manage design consultants, AE firms, specialty vendors, and technical stakeholders to deliver full drawings, specifications, calculations, BIM models, and design basis documentation.
• Maintain alignment with hyperscaler design standards, reference architectures, resiliency tiers, redundancy philosophies and security frameworks.
• Drive modular design, repeatability, standardization, and prefabrication strategies for speed of deployment.
• Identify value engineering (VE) opportunities that reduce cost, schedule, and complexity without reducing resilience.
• Drive TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) metrics including PUE, WUE, power density optimization and redundancy tradeoffs.
• Lead design risk assessments, mitigation planning, and quality control (QA/QC) audits.
• Support sequencing, schedule planning, and cost modeling for multi-wave campus builds.
• Own the development and reporting of design-related metrics and dashboards.
• Lead lessons learned and change management processes to capture insights and strengthen future project predictability.
• Partner with data governance and project controls to ensure data accuracy, consistency, and traceability across the portfolio.
• Implement and evolve PM tools (e.g., ClickUp) to drive visibility, efficiency, and accountability across teams.
• Promote execution strategies including prefab MEP, skids, busways, medium voltage distribution, microgrid readiness, liquid cooling enablement, and high-density design.
• Validate integration for AI/ML clusters, GPU environments, and next-gen power + cooling topologies.
• Ensure compliance with building codes, energy standards, safety, sustainability goals, and utility requirements.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Architecture, Construction, Mechanical or Electrical disciplines (or equivalent experience)
• 8–15+ years in mission-critical, data center, or industrial infrastructure design
• Experience delivering hyperscale facilities, colo campuses, or large critical infrastructure
• Technical leadership across MEP systems, redundancy models, and constructability
• Strong understanding of commissioning, integrated systems testing (IST), and operational handoff
• Travel required is expected to be up to 20% but may increase over time as the business evolves

Benefits

• medical, dental, and vision coverage
• life and AD&D
• short and long-term disability coverage
• paid time off
• employee assistance
• participation in a 401k program that includes company match
• many other additional voluntary benefits