Senior Engineer: Data Centre at Liquid Telecom South Africa

• The Senior Engineer is part of the Development Team in charge of the delivery of new build, expansion and major upgrade of Data Centres across the continent for Africa Data Centres, predominantly in South Africa. He is responsible for all engineering decisions, project design deliverables and acceptance of all major mechanical and electrical deployments completed for Africa Data Centres.
• Responsible to update and improve Design and Group Standards based on lessons learnt on previous projects and in order to comply to latest customer requirements and industry trends.
• Accountable for design, compliance to local regulation and Group standards for all infrastructure serving the Data Centres. Manage all technical design phases for each project from inception to hand-over to Operations team. This includes oversight of professional engineering consultants and technical sign-off & acceptance of their deliverables.
• Responsible for technical sign-off during all significant design, construction and commissioning activities for data centre infrastructure for hand-over to the operations team.
• Responsible for providing technical support to the Senior Project Manager, in house Sales teams and Operations teams as required.

Minimum Requirements

Formal Qualifications Required

• BSc in Electrical or Mechanical Engineering
• Certified Data Centre Professional - advantageous
• UTI Tier Designer - advantageous

Job Related Experience Required

• 5 years experience in Critical facility design & delivery
• 10 years experience with M&E project design & delivery
• 5 years significant Critical Facility commissioning and acceptance experience
• 5 years experience in Data centre Design and Build
• 5 years International projects experience advantageous

Job Related Knowledge Required

• In-depth knowledge of Critical infrastructure, including MV / LV electrical systems, HVAC / cooling, security, fire systems, and BMS
• Knowledge in Construction/development project
• Knowledge of data centre international trends and key performance metrics
• Knowledge of the African Data Centre industry and market
• Good understanding of technology, products and services offered

Job Related Skills Required

• Technically competent with complex engineering systems
• Ability to work alone or as part of a cross-functional team
• Strong verbal and written communications skills
• Good analytical thinking ability
• Ability to work under pressure in a mission critical environment
• Highly motivated and disciplined
• Process-oriented and conscientious
• Delivery focused and able to make things happen
• Problem solver with an ability to find innovative ways to resolve issues

Key Outputs

Data Centre Design Management

• Accountable for data centre electrical and mechanical design
• Responsible for professional team technical supervision and oversight of professional services teams (consulting engineers / architects) for all data centre development projects
• Responsible for technical approvals and project design milestones acceptance and sign off
• Accountable for design compliance to local regulations
• Accountable for ensuring safety by design principles are being followed during the design and construction process
• Responsible for technical tender adjudications and equipment and contractor selection
• Establishment of commissioning acceptance criteria for all critical mechanical and electrical systems, including minimum requirements for hand-over documentation
• Final authority for commissioning activities, site acceptance and hand-over to the operations team

Team work and coordination

• Accountable for continuous technical support for the project delivery and construction teams
• Ensure that Operations team have approved design during all the development phases
• Responsible for the delivery of effective communications between the operations and professional design team
• Coordinate Operations team prior to hand-over during commissioning and training activities
• Ensure that all internal process, rules or constraints are being considered at design level.

Group Standards

• Responsible for the development of a more robust and accountable design process
• Development of standardised data centre environmental requirements and ongoing energy efficiency (PUE) targets
• Ensure Design consistency across the Data Centres of the Group
• Ensure that the Group standards comply to the latest customer and industry requirements
• Responsible for all technical lessons learnt sessions with Project team and Operations team
• Ensure that any design initiative are thought at Group level and not local level.
• Responsible to update the Group Standards on a regular basis

Financial Management

• Oversight of capital budgets for data centre infrastructure projects
• Responsible for realising deferred CAPEX for future upgrades and new build deployments
• Responsible for achieving a reduction in CAPEX and for generating OPEX savings with best practice international design principals
• Responsible for energy saving initiatives to reduce PUE across all facilities

People Management / Communication

• Oversight of professional services teams (consulting engineers, architects, commissioning agents) and their deliverables
• Responsible for operations technical support
• Responsible for Senior PM technical support
• Responsible for in house Sales technical support
• Report issues in a timely manner