{"id":2093586,"url":"https://alion.io/job/lightedge-senior-director-data-center-engineering","title":"Senior Director, Data Center Engineering","company":{"id":678669,"name":"Lightedge","domain":"lightedge.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/lightedge","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Lever","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":75,"open_postings":4,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":1,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":39,"computed_at":"2026-10-10T05:45:15Z"}},"role":"Leadership","role_family":"Leadership","seniority":"head","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Kansas City, United States","Dallas, United States","Nashville, United States","Des Moines, United States","Austin, United States","Ashburn, United States","Georgia"],"countries":["US","GE"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":null,"salary_estimate":{"min_usd":122000,"max_usd":229000,"period":"year","method":"role_seniority_country_remote_cell","sample_n":2295},"experience_years_min":10,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-08T13:46:37Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-08","last_verified_at":"2026-10-11T20:48:39Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":3,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":3},"description":"The Senior Director, Data Center Engineering serves as the senior technical authority for the company’s data center design and development program. Reporting to the Vice President, Data Center Operations, this role owns the company’s standard data center design approach, leads the technical development of buildouts and expansions, and is accountable for reducing construction cost while protecting reliability, safety, maintainability, capacity, and customer requirements.\nThe role connects design strategy, development execution, construction economics, and long-term operations. It directs third-party design teams, partners with general contractors and internal stakeholders to generate value engineering opportunities, establishes design and acceptance requirements, and ensures that completed work can be safely operated, maintained, expanded, and supported over its lifecycle. Technical due diligence and feasibility analysis for potential acquisitions remain part of the role, but the primary focus is the company’s expected buildout and expansion program.\nRole Scope and Interfaces\nThis position partners closely with the SVP of Development, Finance, Legal, Sales, Security, IT, Construction, third-party design firms, commissioning providers, general contractors, utilities, and site operations teams.\nThe Senior Director owns standard design, technical design quality, value engineering, cost-reduction recommendations, and operations readiness. The SVP of Development or assigned development leader retains accountability for the overall development program, commercial transaction, project delivery strategy, and construction execution unless otherwise delegated. The Senior Director is expected to challenge assumptions, define technical requirements, identify unacceptable risk, and provide clear recommendations to executive leadership.\nResponsibilities:\nDesign Standards, Development, and Cost Leadership\nOwn and continuously improve the company’s standard data center design, including repeatable electrical, mechanical, controls, architectural, structural, fire/life-safety, security, telecommunications, and operational design criteria.\nTranslate operational requirements, customer commitments, reliability objectives, capacity assumptions, and lifecycle considerations into practical design standards and owner’s technical requirements.\nOwn construction-cost reduction as a core performance objective. Establish cost-conscious design principles, benchmark project costs, identify cost drivers, and track the financial effect of design decisions from concept through closeout.\nGenerate, evaluate, and prioritize value engineering ideas with internal design teams, third-party consultants, general contractors, equipment vendors, and site operations while protecting safety, reliability, maintainability, schedule, capacity, and customer commitments.\nManage and oversee third-party design team(s), including scopes of work, deliverables, design schedules, technical quality, design coordination, fee and change control, and adherence to company standards.\nEstablish design review gates and approval criteria that test effectiveness, efficiency, constructability, maintainability, energy performance, lifecycle cost, and operational impact before designs advance.\nBuild a repeatable library of standard details, specifications, equipment selections, design assumptions, lessons learned, and approved alternatives to improve speed, consistency, and cost across future projects.\nBuildout and Expansion Engineering Oversight\nEstablish owner’s technical requirements and operational acceptance criteria for new builds, brownfield conversions, expansions, renovations, and major infrastructure replacements.\nLead technical reviews at appropriate design and delivery stages, including concept, basis of design, schematic, detailed design, construction documents, bid packages, submittals, commissioning plans, and turnover packages.\nPerform or direct constructability, maintainability, resiliency, capacity, energy, safety, code, lifecycle, and operational impact reviews of electrical, mechanical, controls, civil, structural, fire protection, security, and telecommunications designs.\nReview proposed value engineering and changes for their effect on reliability, maintainability, customer commitments, future capacity, operating cost, safety, schedule, and lifecycle risk.\nServe as an owner’s technical representative with consultants, contractors, commissioning agents, utilities, authorities having jurisdiction, and equipment vendors; escalate material deviations and unresolved risks.\nReview RFIs, submittals, change proposals, test plans, nonconformance reports, punch lists, and as-built documentation for technical completeness and operational acceptability.\nAcquisition and Feasibility Technical Due Diligence\nLead or direct the technical evaluation of prospective data center acquisitions, leases, conversions, and major capacity opportunities as needed to support investment decisions.\nAssess electrical infrastructure, utility service, medium- and low-voltage distribution, substations, switchgear, transformers, generators, UPS systems, batteries, PDUs, RPPs, grounding, protection, monitoring, and available mission-critical capacity.\nAssess mechanical and environmental systems, including chillers, cooling towers, dry coolers, CRAH/CRAC units, RTUs, pumps, heat rejection, controls, water use, containment, airflow, and high-density cooling capability.\nEvaluate resiliency, redundancy, maintainability, fault tolerance, failure modes, single points of failure, maintenance bypass capability, isolation strategies, and the practical ability to perform work without customer impact.\nReview site condition, equipment age, end-of-life exposure, vendor support, spare-parts availability, maintenance history, testing records, deferred maintenance, warranties, and known reliability events.\nEvaluate structural, civil, roof, raised-floor, loading, flood, seismic, environmental, fire/life-safety, physical security, telecommunications, and fiber considerations that may limit operations or future expansion.\nValidate current and future capacity using utility commitments, one-line diagrams, equipment ratings, operating limits, customer commitments, internal loads, cooling capacity, and realistic deployment assumptions.\nDevelop a technical risk register, high-level capital and operating cost implications, remediation priorities, expansion constraints, and a written proceed, proceed-with-conditions, or do-not-proceed recommendation.\nCommissioning, Turnover, and Operational Readiness\nDefine commissioning and integrated systems testing expectations for critical electrical, mechanical, controls, fire/life-safety, and monitoring systems.\nCoordinate with commissioning providers, NETA testing firms, arc-flash and protection-coordination engineers, equipment manufacturers, and operations personnel to ensure testing is complete, witnessed, documented, and actionable.\nVerify that SOPs, MOPs, EOPs, preventive maintenance requirements, emergency contacts, training, spare parts, security procedures, monitoring points, labels, one-lines, sequences of operation, and as-built drawings are complete before acceptance.\nEstablish technical conditions for substantial completion, beneficial use, customer deployment, and final operational acceptance.\nSupport warranty administration, defect tracking, root-cause analysis, and post-occupancy performance reviews.\nPortfolio Engineering and Existing Site Support\nProvide engineering leadership for infrastructure lifecycle planning, end-of-life replacement, modernization, reliability improvement, and risk reduction across the existing portfolio.\nMaintain or govern engineering standards, design criteria, capacity models, one-line diagrams, equipment inventories, criticality classifications, and technical documentation.\nSupport capacity planning and oversubscription decisions by connecting customer commitments, actual load, cooling limitations, utility capacity, internal loads, and expansion plans.\nIdentify constraints that affect new customer intake, existing customer growth, maintenance windows, redundancy posture, or site closure and migration decisions.\nParticipate in incident reviews, failure investigations, reliability programs, and lessons-learned processes for events affecting critical infrastructure or customer service.\nGovernance, Standards, and Risk Management\nGovern the company’s standard design, technical diligence, design review, commissioning, acceptance, and handoff processes so they can be applied consistently across multiple sites and project types.\nMaintain design-cost benchmarks, approved alternatives, value engineering logs, and lessons learned to support continuous reduction of build costs.\nMaintain a portfolio-level technical risk register and communicate risk in business terms, including customer impact, probability, consequence, remediation cost, schedule exposure, and residual risk.\nEnsure engineering recommendations are consistent with applicable laws, codes, permits, utility requirements, safety requirements, company standards, customer commitments, and approved design criteria.\nPromote safe work practices, disciplined change control, documented approvals, and clear accountability for technical decisions.\nDecision Rights and Expected Deliverables:\n\nArea\n\nExpected ownership or output\n\nStandard design and cost\n\nCompany design standards, cost benchmarks, value engineering pipeline, and approval of material technical deviations.\n\nAcquisition diligence\n\nTechnical findings, risk register, capacity validation, remediation estimate, and executive recommendation.\n\nDesign authority\n\nTechnical requirements, review comments, deviations, and acceptance criteria for critical infrastructure.\n\nOperational acceptance\n\nRecommendation to accept, conditionally accept, or reject systems that are not complete, tested, documented, or maintainable.\n\nExecutive reporting\n\nClear decisions and escalations supported by facts, financial implications, customer impact, and residual risk.\n\nPortfolio improvement\n\nLifecycle plans, modernization priorities, reliability initiatives, and repeatable engineering standards.\n\nQualifications:\nBachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, architectural engineering, construction management, facilities engineering, or a related technical discipline; equivalent experience may be considered.\nTypically 10 or more years of progressive experience in data center engineering, mission-critical facilities, critical infrastructure, construction oversight, commissioning, technical due diligence, or a closely related field.\nDemonstrated experience evaluating or delivering data center electrical and mechanical infrastructure, preferably across multiple facilities or geographies.\nStrong working knowledge of critical power systems, cooling systems, controls, fire/life safety, physical infrastructure, monitoring, and data center operating practices.\nExperience reading and interpreting electrical one-lines, protection and control diagrams, mechanical plans, sequences of operation, specifications, commissioning scripts, test reports, and as-built documentation.\nExperience leading consultants, contractors, commissioning providers, vendors, and cross-functional stakeholders while maintaining technical accountability for the outcome.\nDemonstrated experience managing third-party engineering and design firms, coordinating multidisciplinary design deliverables, and holding design teams accountable for quality, schedule, and cost.\nDemonstrated experience with value engineering, cost benchmarking, construction-cost reduction, or lifecycle cost optimization for data center or other mission-critical projects.\nAbility to translate complex engineering conditions into concise executive recommendations, investment risks, project decisions, and operational requirements.\nAbility to travel regularly to existing and 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