Program Manager, Data Center & HPC Infrastructure Delivery
Employment Type: Direct Hire
Work Arrangement: Hybrid
Reports to: SVP, Infrastructure Programs
Overview
Our client is seeking an experienced Program Manager to lead the coordinated delivery of a large-scale, multi-year data center and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure program.
This individual will oversee the integrated program plan across design, engineering, construction, power, cooling, procurement, commissioning, and HPC infrastructure deployment. The role will connect facility delivery with compute, storage, networking, and platform readiness, ensuring all workstreams align with program milestones and operational requirements.
Individual Project Managers, engineering leaders, contractors, and functional teams will own specific scopes. The Program Manager will provide program-level oversight across schedule, budget, dependencies, risks, and delivery commitments, driving coordination from initial planning through operational turnover.
This hybrid position requires regular in-person collaboration in Dallas with executive leadership and engineering, construction, infrastructure, and operations teams.
Key Responsibilities
Program Delivery and Governance
- Oversee end-to-end program delivery from planning and design through construction, infrastructure deployment, commissioning, and operational readiness.
- Develop and maintain an integrated master program plan spanning facility development and HPC infrastructure workstreams.
- Track program schedules, capital budgets, forecasts, milestones, quality, risks, and delivery performance.
- Align individual project plans with overall program objectives, phased capacity requirements, and business commitments.
- Establish consistent governance, reporting, milestone reviews, escalation processes, and accountability.
- Maintain risk, assumption, issue, and dependency logs, along with change control and decision tracking.
- Identify critical-path issues, resource constraints, and schedule conflicts; drive mitigation and recovery plans.
Data Center and HPC Infrastructure Integration
- Coordinate dependencies across utility power, on-site generation, electrical distribution, cooling, controls, compute, storage, and networking.
- Integrate HPC deployment milestones into the overall facility construction and commissioning schedule.
- Align GPU and CPU hardware delivery, rack installation, high-speed network connectivity, storage deployment, and platform readiness with available power, cooling, and floor space.
- Partner with technical leaders to track readiness for cluster installation, configuration, validation, and production handoff.
- Coordinate high-density infrastructure requirements, including liquid cooling, rack power, network fabrics, and supporting mechanical systems.
- Manage sequencing between facility turnover, equipment installation, infrastructure testing, and workload readiness.
- Track dependencies across hardware vendors, infrastructure teams, platform engineering, and operations.
Cross-Functional and Project Coordination
- Serve as the central coordination point across engineering, construction, procurement, supply chain, finance, technology, commissioning, and operations.
- Provide program-level oversight across Project Managers responsible for individual projects, phases, and infrastructure workstreams.
- Integrate project schedules and resolve issues that extend across multiple teams or scopes.
- Align design completion, procurement, installation, testing, commissioning, and turnover activities.
- Coordinate long-lead equipment, material availability, vendor capacity, and supply chain risks.
- Partner with finance on capital planning, expenditure tracking, forecasting, and budget reporting.
- Coordinate with utility providers, permitting authorities, municipalities, and other external stakeholders as required.
Vendor and Contractor Oversight
- Monitor program commitments across general contractors, specialty contractors, engineering partners, equipment manufacturers, technology vendors, and commissioning providers.
- Track performance against contractual milestones, schedules, quality requirements, and delivery expectations.
- Identify vendor risks affecting construction progress, HPC deployment, commissioning, or operational readiness.
- Ensure external partners understand program priorities, sequencing, and cross-functional dependencies.
- Drive resolution of delivery gaps with internal workstream owners and external partners.
Schedule, Risk, and Change Management
- Maintain visibility into the integrated master schedule and overall critical path.
- Monitor procurement timelines, construction sequencing, infrastructure deployment, and commissioning dependencies.
- Identify emerging risks and lead mitigation, contingency, and recovery planning.
- Evaluate scope, design, and schedule changes for impacts on cost, capacity, technical readiness, and delivery milestones.
- Ensure major changes are documented, approved, and communicated.
- Escalate significant risks and decisions to senior leadership with clear business impacts and recommendations.
Commissioning and Operational Readiness
- Integrate commissioning and technical validation activities into the overall delivery plan.
- Coordinate construction completion, equipment startup, integrated systems testing, punch-list resolution, and turnover.
- Track readiness across electrical, mechanical, controls, networking, security, life safety, and HPC infrastructure.
- Partner with technical teams to incorporate cluster acceptance testing, performance validation, and infrastructure handoff into program milestones.
- Ensure operations staffing, procedures, documentation, training, and support requirements are ready for turnover.
- Support phased delivery where construction, commissioning, infrastructure deployment, and live operations occur simultaneously.
Executive Reporting
- Maintain executive dashboards covering schedule, budget, procurement, construction, HPC deployment, commissioning, risk, and overall program health.
- Provide clear visibility into critical-path activities, upcoming milestones, delivery forecasts, and required decisions.
- Translate complex technical and construction issues into business impacts and actionable recommendations.
- Maintain accurate forecasts for capital requirements, capacity availability, and operational turnover.
Required Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in Engineering, Construction Management, Business, Computer Science, or a related discipline.
- 10+ years of experience in program management, project management, data center delivery, infrastructure deployment, construction, engineering, or large-scale capital programs.
- Demonstrated experience overseeing complex, multi-year, multi-phase infrastructure or construction programs.
- Direct experience delivering data centers, HPC facilities, cloud infrastructure, colocation facilities, or comparable mission-critical technical environments.
- Experience coordinating facility delivery with compute, storage, networking, or other technology infrastructure deployment.
- Strong experience managing integrated schedules across multiple projects, contractors, disciplines, and workstreams.
- Strong understanding of critical-path scheduling, dependency management, risk management, change control, forecasting, and program governance.
- Experience coordinating engineering, construction, procurement, commissioning, and operational readiness.
- Experience working with general contractors, engineering firms, equipment manufacturers, technology vendors, and commissioning providers.
- Strong financial awareness and experience managing capital budgets and forecasts.
- Proven ability to drive cross-functional issue resolution and communicate effectively with senior leadership.
- Ability to work in a hybrid environment with regular in-person collaboration in Dallas.
Preferred Qualifications
- PMP, PgMP, or comparable project/program management certification.
- Experience delivering data center or mission-critical capital programs exceeding $250 million.
- Experience supporting HPC, AI, GPU clusters, or other high-density compute environments.
- Familiarity with HPC infrastructure, including GPU/CPU systems, high-speed Ethernet or InfiniBand fabrics, large-scale storage, and cluster platforms.
- Familiarity with electrical distribution, generators, UPS systems, cooling plants, liquid cooling, controls, and commissioning.
- Experience with utility coordination, electrical capacity development, permitting, and municipal stakeholders.
- Experience coordinating hardware procurement, infrastructure installation, cluster validation, and production readiness.
- Experience managing phased developments with concurrent construction, commissioning, technology deployment, and operations.
Ideal Background
Strong candidates may come from data center development, HPC and AI infrastructure, cloud infrastructure, colocation, semiconductor facilities, advanced manufacturing, energy infrastructure, or other mission-critical capital environments.
The ideal candidate has coordinated major infrastructure programs across both physical facility delivery and technology deployment, aligning multiple teams and vendors around schedule, budget, risk, capacity, and operational readiness.