With the UK’s most geographically dispersed network of data centres, Pulsant is poised to capture the strong growth that will be driven by distribution of workloads closer to the Edge. Alongside expansion driven by M&A, Pulsant is investing heavily into the expansion and improvement of our portfolio to underpin this growth.
The Director of Data Centre Build and Engineering is a strategically critical senior management role with accountability for the engineering integrity, build delivery, and technical governance of Pulsant’s data centre portfolio.
The role leads Pulsant’s Mechanical and Electrical engineering capability and oversees all major build, expansion, and infrastructure upgrade programmes across the estate. It ensures that capital investment delivers operationally robust, maintainable, and compliant assets, aligned to Pulsant’s technical standards and long-term strategy.
This role acts as the final internal technical authority for data centre build and engineering decisions and provides leadership to three regional M&E engineering teams responsible for the safe operation, modification, and development of the data centres’ power and cooling systems.
We are flexible on base location for this role, it can be based from any of our offices (Gateshead, Edinburgh or Maidenhead) or any of our 14 data centres which are spread across the UK. The role will involve regular national travel.
Key responsibilities:
- Act as Pulsant’s senior engineering authority for data centre infrastructure, owning engineering outcomes across the full asset lifecycle.
- Lead the Mechanical and Electrical engineering function, setting strategy, standards, and providing assurance across all regions.
- Define, own, and enforce engineering design standards, reference architectures, resilience principles, and build methodologies.
- Support the office of the CTO which leads on portfolio, product and design decisions to delivery service to Pulsant’s clients.
- Provide oversight of all major data centre build, expansion, and refurbishment programmes, from design sign-off to operational handover.
- Own the capital investment roadmap for engineering and builds, ensuring prioritisation, governance, risk management, and alignment to business objectives.
- Lead build, commissioning, and operational readiness strategies, including integrated system testing, live-site integration, and safe handover to operations.
- Establish and operate robust engineering governance, risk, and compliance frameworks, including health and safety, fire, resilience, and audit requirements.
- Act as the single point of technical accountability across data centre operations.
- Work with stakeholders in the Commercial organisation to support Pulsant’s growth ambitions.
- Lead, develop, and embed a high-performance engineering culture focused on safety, accountability, consistency, and delivery excellence.
What / who we're looking for:
- Significant experience leading Mechanical and Electrical engineering functions and capital investment programmes in critical infrastructure environments (data centre experience strongly preferred).
- Proven delivery of complex build, expansion, or modernisation programmes in live operational environments.
- Experience managing consultants, contractors, and specialist vendors.
- Strong background in engineering governance, technical assurance, and risk management.
- Demonstrated ability to align engineering outcomes with commercial and operational priorities.
- Strong leadership and influencing skills
- Full UK Driving Licence.
If you’re excited about this opportunity but don’t meet every requirement listed above, we still encourage you to apply. We value transferable experience and potential - and you might be exactly who we’re looking for!
Pulsant offers:
- A supportive work environment with a focus on career growth, development, work life balance and well-being.
- A friendly, family-like atmosphere where almost half of the team have been with Pulsant for 5+ years.
- Benefits include 5% pension, private healthcare (family cover), cycle to work scheme, EV scheme, free breakfast and snacks, Udemy licence and more.
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