The posting
The Director Data Center Facilities Development JAPAC is accountable for the regional strategy, governance, and execution of new data center builds, expansions, retrofits, and capacity upgrades across JAPAC. The role leads a regional delivery team and works closely with Real Estate, Design, Network, Commissioning, Operations, contractors, utilities, and customers to deliver scalable, reliable, mission-critical facilities.
Responsibilities
1) Facilities Development Leadership (JAPAC Portfolio)
- Own end-to-end facilities development outcomes across JAPAC programs, including new data center builds, expansions, retrofits, capacity upgrades, and customer-driven delivery.
- Establish and maintain clear delivery governance: milestones, readiness gates, reporting cadence, and executive decision forums.
- Ensure delivery plans align with business commitments, including capacity availability, early access, energisation, network readiness, commissioning, and customer turn-up.
2) Regional Process & Standardization
- Implement and continuously improve regional facilities development processes covering program management, change control, risk, cost, QA/QC, commissioning readiness, and operational handover.
- Standardise operating rhythms: weekly program cycle, critical path tracking, trend reporting, and issue escalation.
- Build repeatable toolsets and templates, including dashboards, site-readiness checklists, handover packs, commissioning-readiness plans, and risk registers.
3) Program Governance & Controls
- Drive disciplined schedule, risk, and dependency management across multiple parallel projects.
- Lead critical path intervention and recovery planning when needed (acceleration plans, resource smoothing, constraint removal).
- Ensure strong management of change, claims exposure, procurement interfaces, and commercial discipline in partnership with PMO, Contracts, and Quantity Surveying teams.
4) Cross-Functional Stakeholder Management
- Align Facilities Development with Real Estate, Design, Network, Commissioning, and Operations to ensure integrated planning, capacity delivery, and operational readiness.
- Act as the senior point of contact for facilities development execution across internal leadership, colocation partners, consultants, general contractors, utilities, and customers.
- Lead executive-level communication—clear, concise, data-driven reporting with recommended actions/decisions.
5) Safety, Quality, and Readiness
- Champion a “safety-first” culture and ensure compliance with regional and site safety requirements.
- Drive quality assurance practices, including inspections, defect management, systems completion, integrated testing, and commissioning readiness.
- Ensure consistent handover, documentation, and site standards across the transition from construction to commissioning and operations.
6) Team Leadership & Capability Building
- Lead and develop a high-performing regional facilities development team, including Construction Managers, Project Managers, PMO, and program controls professionals.
- Build regional capacity plans and resource strategies that match the JAPAC data center development pipeline.
- Coach leaders to improve communication, stakeholder engagement, and disciplined execution.
Success Measures (KPIs)
Delivery performance: capacity and milestone attainment, early access and RFS performance, schedule trend stability, and critical-path reliability.
Safety: incident rates, audit outcomes, and safety culture indicators.
Quality and readiness: defect closure rates, commissioning and integrated-testing gates passed, handover-pack completeness, and operational acceptance.
Governance: on-time reporting, accurate forecasting, effective escalations/decision turnaround.
Process maturity: adoption of the regional facilities development system, measurable cycle-time reductions, and fewer recurring delivery issues.
Required Experience & Qualifications
- 14+ years of construction, facilities development, or program delivery experience, ideally in mission-critical environments such as data centers, critical infrastructure, industrial, pharmaceutical, aviation, or utilities.
- Proven leadership experience in managing multiple data center or critical-facility projects across JAPAC. Experience managing projects across different markets and locations will be highly valued.
- Strong understanding of the full data center development lifecycle: site and utility interfaces, design coordination, construction execution, commissioning, integrated testing, and operational handover.
- Demonstrated capability building scalable processes, governance frameworks, and delivery teams across multiple markets.
- Exceptional stakeholder management across technical and non-technical teams.
- Familiarity with contract/commercial management and schedule/cost controls.
Preferred
- Experience delivering hyperscale, colocation, or enterprise data center programs.
- Knowledge of data center commissioning, integrated systems testing, and operational-readiness gating.
- Experience working with colocation or partner delivery models, utilities, and integrated network and customer dependencies.
Key Skills & Competencies
- Strategic leadership and execution focus: able to set direction and drive facilities development outcomes.
- Program governance and schedule discipline; familiarity with P6 or MS Project is a plus.
- Strong risk, dependency, and escalation management.
- High EQ, executive communication, and cross-cultural leadership across JAPAC markets.
- Process improvement mindset (Lean/continuous improvement experience beneficial).
