AI Data Center Design Lead – High-Density Compute

Jacobs; Appleton (WI); On-site; USD 166,000 - 228,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health insurance

401(k)

Employee stock purchase plan

Unlimited PPTO

7 paid holidays

Caregiver leave

Performance bonus

Job summary

Jacobs is seeking a Senior Design Manager – AI Data Center White Space Design to provide technical leadership for planning, design, construction, commissioning, and deployment of large-scale, high-density data center environments.

Initially based in South Carolina, you will lead design decisions and coordinate with clients, OEMs, and engineers to deliver safe, scalable, and future-ready white space solutions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Architecture, Construction Management, or a related technical discipline.
• 15+ years of relevant engineering/design experience in mission-critical or data center facilities.
• Demonstrated experience leading hyperscale, HPC, high-density, or AI-focused data center white space design.
• Direct experience with high-density rack deployment and GPU/HPC compute environments.
• Strong working knowledge of high-density rack and compute architectures; busway, PDU, RPP, and rack-level power distribution; direct-to-chip cooling; air/liquid hybrid cooling; high-density network infrastructure; capacity modeling.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the senior subject matter expert and technical authority for AI and high-density data center white space design.
• Establish and govern white space Basis of Design, design criteria, reference architectures, and technical standards.
• Translate GPU, accelerator, HPC, and next-generation IT platform requirements into facility requirements for power, cooling, connectivity, rack configuration, structural loading, service access, and deployment.
• Lead data hall layouts, rack deployment strategies, equipment spacing, compute-block planning, capacity utilization, and future expansion planning.
• Provide technical direction for white space electrical distribution, including busway, PDU, RPP, rack-level power, redundancy, monitoring, and high-density power architectures.
• Lead development of air-cooled, liquid-cooled, and hybrid cooling solutions, including direct-to-chip cooling, CDUs, rack manifolds, technology cooling water interfaces, leak detection, and thermal optimization.
• Guide integration of high-density AI network infrastructure, including network racks, high-speed fiber pathways, cable management, InfiniBand, and high-speed Ethernet environments.
• Develop and validate capacity models linking facility MW capacity to data hall, compute block, rack, power, cooling, network, and floor-space requirements.
• Address rack loading, structural capacity, equipment access, material handling, installation pathways, serviceability, and equipment replacement requirements.
• Lead white space constructability, deployment, commissioning, phased energization, turnover, and operational-readiness planning.
• Evaluate designs for resiliency, concurrent maintainability, failure isolation, technology refresh, and future increases in rack density.
• Lead multidisciplinary coordination across electrical, mechanical, structural, architectural, controls, telecommunications, commissioning, construction, IT, and operations.
• Serve as a senior technical interface with clients, technology providers, OEMs, contractors, commissioning teams, and facility operators.
• Champion standardized designs, lessons learned, technical governance, modularization, and repeatable deployment strategies across hyperscale programs.

Skills

Leadership

Multidisciplinary coordination

Client/stakeholder communication

Data center design

High-density infrastructure

Education

Professional Engineer (PE) or Registered Architect (RA)

Tools

BIM

DCIM

BMS

EPMS

Job description

Jacobs is seeking a Senior Design Manager – AI Data Center White Space Design to provide technical leadership for planning, design, construction, commissioning, and deployment of large-scale, high-density data center environments.

Initially based in South Carolina, you will lead design decisions and coordinate with clients, OEMs, and engineers to deliver safe, scalable, and future-ready white space solutions.