VP Data Center Platforms, Solutions and Strategies

Submer; Houston (TX); On-site; USD 260,000 - 420,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid-friendly environment

International diversity

Job summary

Submer is seeking a Senior Director of Data Center Platforms, Solutions and Strategies to define and scale the company’s AI-ready data-center platform portfolio. You will bridge product management, architecture, commercial strategy, engineering, and manufacturing to deliver configurable, high-density solutions.

You will lead the development of repeatable reference architectures, partner with engineering on requirements, and establish a global delivery framework to accelerate time-to-market while

Qualifications

• Demonstrated knowledge of data-center infrastructure, including power and cooling.
• Experience with AI infrastructure, HPC, and GPU deployments.
• Strong commercial acumen: pricing, cost modeling, margins, and portfolio prioritization.
• Proven leadership across product, engineering, operations, manufacturing, and delivery.
• Global deployment experience across regions and willingness to travel internationally.

Responsibilities

• Define global product and platform strategy for AI-factory data centers, including modular and traditional solutions.
• Develop roadmaps for power, cooling, liquid cooling, controls, and deployment services.
• Lead reference architectures and ensure scalable, configurable platforms for diverse customers.
• Guide tradeoffs between standardization and bespoke designs to protect margins and delivery reliability.
• Establish governance, roadmap reviews, and lifecycle management disciplines across teams.

Skills

Data-center knowledge

AI infrastructure

GPU deployments

Commercial acumen

Leadership experience

Global deployment

International travel

Education

Engineering/related degree

MBA preferred

Job description

VP Data Center Platforms, Solutions and Strategies

About Submer

Submer enables organizations scaling AI to overcome the limits of traditional datacenters across power, compute density and efficiency.

We design and deliver scalable, high-density AI datacenter infrastructure built around industry-leading liquid cooling, supporting everything from early AI deployments to full-scale production environments.

Acting as a full-stack delivery partner, Submer provides advisory, design, build and IT integration through a single point of accountability, working with a deep ecosystem of technology specialists. This end-to-end approach accelerates time-to-AI while reducing operational cost, complexity and environmental impact.

What Impact You Will Have

The Senior Director, Data Center Platforms, Solutions and Strategies will define and scale the company’s portfolio of modular and traditional data-center solutions for AI factories. This leader will translate market demand, AI workload requirements, customer needs, and technology trends into differentiated, commercially viable, and deployable data-center platforms.

This role connects product management, solution architecture, commercial strategy, engineering, manufacturing, supply chain, and global deployment. The successful candidate will establish standardized yet configurable offerings across prefabricated/modular and site-built data centers, with particular emphasis on high-density AI and HPC workloads, accelerated deployment, power availability, liquid cooling, resiliency, and total cost of ownership.

The ideal leader is equal parts product strategist, data-center technologist, commercial operator, and delivery executive. They can engage a customer on AI capacity, rack density, cooling strategy, and time-to-market; work with engineering on reference architecture and product requirements; challenge operations on cost and delivery readiness; and present a clear investment case to the executive team.

What You’ll Do

Platform strategy

• Define the global product and platform strategy for AI-factory data centers, including modular, prefabricated, hybrid, and traditional site-built solutions.
• Establish a clear portfolio architecture that balances standardized building blocks with customer-specific configurability.
• Develop solution roadmaps for AI-ready white space, power systems, cooling plants, liquid cooling, controls, network/IT integration, deployment services, and lifecycle offerings.
• Identify priority market segments, including hyperscale’s, cloud, neocloud and GPU-as-a-service providers, sovereign AI, enterprise AI, telecommunications, research/HPC, and edge deployments.
• Convert customer, market, regulatory, technology, and competitive inputs into quantified product requirements and investment priorities.
• Define platform differentiation around deployment speed, capacity density, energy efficiency, water use, resilience, scalability, operability, and lifecycle economics.

Solutions and architecture

• Lead the definition of repeatable reference architectures for AI factories, from campus and facility design through modular deployment units and integrated infrastructure systems.
• Ensure platforms can accommodate evolving compute densities, GPU roadmaps, rack power requirements, direct-to-chip liquid cooling, rear-door heat exchangers, and other advanced thermal-management approaches.
• Partner with engineering teams to define product requirements, technical specifications, performance thresholds, validation plans, and acceptance criteria.
• Guide the tradeoffs between standardized platforms and bespoke customer designs, protecting manufacturability, margin, delivery certainty, and long-term product scalability.
• Create a modularity strategy that defines what is standardized, configurable, factory-built, site-assembled, or custom-engineered.
• Establish solution documentation, design rules, configuration tools, and reference designs that enable consistent sales, engineering, procurement, manufacturing, and deployment execution.

Commercial strategy and pricing

• Own the commercial framework for data-center platforms, including pricing architecture, configuration logic, target margins, cost-to-serve assumptions, and value-based positioning.
• Develop business cases for new platform investments, product variants, strategic partnerships, manufacturing capacity, and geographic expansion.
• Partner with Sales, Finance, and Operations to create pricing tools, quote governance, deal-review processes, and profitability guardrails.
• Define lifecycle revenue opportunities, including commissioning, operations support, maintenance, retrofit, capacity expansion, spares, warranty, and service agreements.
• Analyze competitive offerings, customer buying criteria, market pricing, and total-cost-of-ownership models to strengthen the company’s commercial position.
• Support strategic pursuits and executive customer engagements by articulating the business and technical value of the company’s platforms.

Delivery and industrialization

• Partner with Global Delivery, Construction, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, and Quality leaders to ensure products can be delivered safely, predictably, and profitably at scale.
• Translate product roadmaps into industrialization plans, including make-versus-buy decisions, supplier strategies, factory capacity, quality controls, and lead-time reduction initiatives.
• Establish delivery-ready standards for design release, procurement, factory acceptance testing, shipping, site integration, commissioning, and customer handover.
• Lead cross-functional post-project reviews to identify recurring cost, schedule, quality, and customer-experience issues and incorporate lessons into future platform releases.
• Drive product simplification and design-to-cost initiatives that improve speed, margin, quality, and global scalability.
• Support regional adaptation of platforms for grid conditions, codes, permitting, climate, seismic requirements, water availability, and local-content requirements.

Leadership and governance

• Build and lead a high-performing global team spanning product management, strategy, solutions architecture, commercial analysis, and platform operations.
• Establish portfolio governance, stage-gate processes, roadmap reviews, design authority, investment prioritization, and product lifecycle management disciplines.
• Align stakeholders across Sales, Engineering, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Construction, Finance, Legal, Service, and regional business teams.
• Present platform strategy, investment recommendations, performance metrics, and business risks to senior leadership and executive customers.
• Foster a culture that balances customer responsiveness with platform discipline, operational rigor, commercial accountability, and speed of execution.

What You’ll Need

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering, architecture, construction management, business, or a related technical discipline; advanced degree or MBA preferred.
• 12+ years of progressive leadership experience in data centers, critical infrastructure, power and cooling systems, modular construction, industrialized products, cloud infrastructure, AI platforms, mission-critical facilities, cloud infrastructure, or industrialized products or adjacent sectors.
• Demonstrated experience bringing complex infrastructure products or solutions from market definition through engineering, commercialization, and global deployment.
• Strong knowledge of data-center infrastructure, including electrical distribution, backup power, cooling systems, liquid cooling, controls, commissioning, resiliency, and capacity planning.
• Experience with high-density computing, AI infrastructure, HPC, GPU deployments, or liquid-cooled data-center environments strongly preferred.
• Proven commercial acumen, including product pricing, cost modeling, margin management, business cases, and portfolio prioritization.
• Experience leading cross-functional organizations across product, engineering, operations, manufacturing, commercialization, solutions architecture, supply chain, and delivery.
• Ability to work effectively with executive customers, strategic partners, OEMs, contractors, consultants, and internal senior leaders.
• Demonstrated success scaling global product portfolios exceeding $100M+ in annual revenue.
• Willingness to travel internationally as required.

Preferred Experience

• Data-center OEM, colocation provider, hyperscaler, cloud company, modular infrastructure provider, EPC, mission-critical engineering firm, or power/cooling equipment manufacturer, utility power strategy, generation technologies, and energy-storage solutions.
• Development of prefab or modular systems such as integrated power skids, e-houses, modular electrical rooms, containerized data centers, cooling modules, or prefabricated MEP assemblies.
• Knowledge of EPC, mission-critical construction, and industrialized manufacturing models.
• Global deployment experience across North America, EMEA, and APAC.
• Experience with large-scale campus development, utility interconnection, power procurement, on-site generation, energy storage, and sustainability strategy.
• Familiarity with commercial models such as sale of equipment, turnkey delivery, capacity-as-a-service, build-to-suit, leasing, and lifecycle services.

Success Measures

The Senior Director will be measured on the ability to:

• Deliver a clear, differentiated, and financially attractive AI-factory platform roadmap.
• Increase adoption of standardized platforms and reduce unnecessary one-off engineering.
• Improve quote speed, design-cycle time, deployment speed, manufacturing repeatability, and on-time commissioning performance.
• Improve platform gross margin, lifecycle revenue, and cost competitiveness.
• Establish pricing discipline and improve visibility into customer, configuration, regional, and project-level profitability.
• Increase readiness for high-density AI workloads and advanced liquid-cooling deployments.
• Build a scalable global product-and-solutions organization with effective governance and measurable accountability.

What We Offer

Attractive compensation package reflecting your expertise and experience.

• A great work environment characterized by friendliness, international diversity, flexibility, and a hybrid-friendly approach.
• You´ll be part of a fast-growing scale-up with a mission to make a positive impact, offering an exciting career evolution.

Our job titles may span more than one job level. The actual base pay is dependent on a number of factors, such as transferable skills, work experience, business needs and market demands.

Our inclusive responsibility

Submer is committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, veteran status, or any other protected category under applicable law.