Senior Director Infrastructure Engineering

About this role

About Volta Volta is the category-defining, fully vertically integrated AI infrastructure platform – from capital to clusters to software, under a founder-led enterprise. Our mission is The Utility of Compute™: AI infrastructure as dependable and available as electricity, for every organization that needs it. Launched with a $10B strategic partnership with one of the leading frontier AI labs, a Series A led by Andreessen Horowitz, and a $5B AI Infrastructure Fund, Volta is building the infrastructure layer of the AI era from the ground up.

We are 100+ people across London, Palo Alto, and New York, with rapid growth expectations to hundreds. The Role We are looking for a Senior Director, Infrastructure Engineering to lead engineering across Volta's global portfolio of AI factories. You will report directly to the VP, Development and Design within the Delivery organisation and lead a team of subject matter experts spanning every infrastructure architecture and engineering discipline, from power and cooling to structures, controls and network infrastructure.

You will own Volta's engineering design standards, developing and deploying them across our projects in EMEA and AMER. You will work day to day with your peers in the Design organisation to support live projects and shape Volta's Reference Design for AI factory infrastructure, and partner with the CTO and CPO organisations so that every site turns up compute consistently. You will build the engineering function, its standards and its ways of working as Volta scales.

What You Will Do › Lead, develop and grow a team of infrastructure engineering SMEs across architecture, electrical, mechanical, cooling, structural, civil, controls and network infrastructure disciplines, building the capability to support a fast growing global pipeline › Develop and deploy Volta's engineering design standards and specifications for AI factories, making sure they are applied consistently across every project and region › Work with peers in the Design organisation to provide engineering input into Volta's Reference Design for AI factory infrastructure, balancing performance, cost, speed of delivery and scalability › Support live projects with engineering expertise from concept through detailed design, construction and commissioning, resolving technical issues quickly so delivery is never held up › Partner with the CTO and CPO organisations to align facility design with compute, rack and network requirements, enabling consistent turn up of compute across the portfolio › Track the evolution of AI hardware, including rack densities, liquid cooling and power architectures, and translate it into design standards that keep Volta's AI factories ready for next generation compute › Own engineering governance, including design reviews, technical assurance and design authority for any departure from standard › Work with Procurement to standardise specifications for long lead equipment, enabling framework agreements, prefabrication and modular delivery at scale › Champion safety in design, reliability, maintainability and energy and water efficiency, working with Operations to design for how our facilities will be run › Embed lessons learned from delivery and operations back into the standards, so every AI factory builds faster, safer and more efficiently than the last › Provide engineering status, risk and decision reporting to the VP, Development and Design and the executive team What You Will Bring › A degree in electrical, mechanical, civil or building services engineering, with chartered or professional engineer status (for example CEng or PE) preferred › Significant experience in data centre or mission critical infrastructure engineering, including senior leadership of multidisciplinary engineering teams › Deep technical expertise in at least one core discipline, such as power distribution or cooling, and a strong working knowledge across all infrastructure disciplines › A track record developing and deploying design standards, reference designs or basis of design documents for a hyperscale, colocation or large scale data centre developer › Hands on experience with high density and liquid cooled environments for AI and HPC workloads, and an understanding of how GPU cluster requirements drive facility design › Strong commercial judgement, balancing capex, schedule, reliability and operability in design decisions › Confident executive level communication, able to explain complex technical trade offs clearly to technical and non-technical stakeholders › A collaborative leadership style that builds trust with peers across partner teams, and the conviction to hold the line on standards › Exposure to both North American and European projects, or to utility scale power, onsite generation or energy storage, would be an advantage What We Offer At Volta, we believe people do their best work when they feel supported, trusted and able to grow.