Data Center - Project Manager

Astreya•Altoona, IA

3d•Onsite

About The Position

The Site Project & Program Manager owns end-to-end program delivery for an operational pre-integrated rack production and deployment site. This role is the single program point of accountability on site: it owns rack production scheduling and arrival, materials coordination, warehouse balance, BOM accuracy, QA/QC and RMA processes, and the working interface with the integration partner and cross-functional teams. The role translates rack demand and need-by dates into an executable production and materials plan, maintains clear ownership boundaries between internal teams and the integration partner, and gives leadership a clear, numbers-based view of throughput, backlog, material readiness, and risk. The role is expected to preserve production continuity while strengthening the operating model, including trackers, forecasts, escalation paths, documented ownership, and automation of manual workflows.

Requirements

Strong knowledge of project and program management principles, production planning, and operational execution in a build/integration environment.
Demonstrated experience with materials management: demand forecasting, move orders, BOM matching, inbound/outbound logistics, inventory balance, and warehouse operations.
Experience owning QA/QC and RMA processes for hardware or integrated equipment.
Ability to build and maintain production schedules, capacity models, forecasts, trackers, dashboards, and KPI reporting from scratch.
Strong analytical and data reconciliation skills across multiple operational systems.
Experience defining ownership matrices and governance in a shared internal/vendor delivery model, and holding partners to committed scope.
Familiarity with generative AI, LLM platforms, and workflow automation, with the ability to apply them to planning, reporting, and knowledge management.
Proficiency with Google Workspace and standard program management and collaboration tooling.
Proven ability to lead cross-functional delivery with technical, operational, and vendor stakeholders without direct reporting authority.
Composure and resilience under sustained change — the ability to be the visible owner of shifting dates without becoming the friction point between teams.
Self-starting: initiates communication, asks questions early, drives their own demand and materials plan independently rather than waiting for direction.
Strong facilitation skills, with the ability to resolve overlapping ownership claims and ambiguity directly.
Excellent written and verbal communication, including leadership- and VP-level readouts.
Ability to manage concurrent workstreams and competing priorities in a fast-changing environment.
Comfort entering an established operation, rapidly diagnosing gaps, and strengthening structure without disrupting delivery.
Bachelor's degree in project management, supply chain, business administration, engineering, operations, information technology, or a related field; equivalent relevant professional experience may be considered.
5–8 years of progressive experience in program management, production or deployment operations, supply chain, or infrastructure deployment.
Managerial experience is a plus.
Experience taking ownership of an established site, line, or program and improving performance while maintaining operational continuity strongly preferred.
Experience in data center infrastructure, rack integration, manufacturing, logistics, or similarly complex operational environments preferred.
Experience managing or coordinating vendor/integration-partner delivery preferred.
Demonstrated experience developing or improving operational processes, planning frameworks, reporting structures, and program controls.
Project management, supply chain, or process improvement certification preferred.
Factory capacity planning or warehouse capacity planning.
Ability to work effectively in a fast-paced environment where demand, forecasts, and need-by dates change frequently.
Regular on-site presence at the assigned location, including warehouse and production floor environments; extended on-site weeks during leadership transitions and critical production periods.
Willingness to travel to other rack integration and data center sites for alignment, benchmarking, and transition support.
Ability to collaborate across geographically dispersed partner teams.
Flexibility to support critical production, delivery, or escalation activity outside standard business hours.
Ability to comply with applicable site safety, security, and confidentiality requirements.

Responsibilities

Assume ownership of the rack integration program with minimal disruption; maintain clear scope, ownership, cadence, meeting structure, reporting, and escalation paths.
Review, clarify, and maintain the internal-team vs. integration-partner responsibility matrix — including PO creation, material transfer, material delivery, rack build, on-site variations, QA/QC, and RMA — and keep written agreement current as scope evolves.
Identify and close ownership gaps where a responsibility is claimed on paper but not actually being executed on site.
Strengthen existing workflows using proven operating models from comparable sites, and feed improvements back to the broader program.
Convert rack demand, need-by dates, and site requirements into a production schedule and rack arrival plan; sequence builds against material availability and warehouse capacity.
Own rack scheduling and arrival, in-rack cabling, network, and optics coordination with the site build teams.
Provide accurate BOMs and rack demand to the materials function; partner with product quality engineering on BOM development and build-BOM ownership.
Align production schedule with the integration partner's actual throughput capability, and escalate when the two diverge.
Re-plan quickly when program decommits, forecast changes, or scope pivots change need-by dates — and quantify the downstream impact each time rather than absorbing churn silently.
Maintain strong awareness of and integrate with process for incoming and outgoing material coordination, including truck coordination and daily inbound volume.
Align operational workflows with guidelines to support warehouse balance — neither overstocked nor understocked — and ensure safety hazards from pallets staged in aisles or between rows are prevented.
Feed rolling two-week demand forecasts and lock them for the integration partner's production planning.
Coordinate move orders, BOM-to-material matching, and mismatch resolutions through integrated materials systems.
Serve as the day-to-day liaison to the integration partner's materials team, aligning daily material signals with workflows.
Monitor and support resolution of aged, excess, or stranded inventory resulting from design or implementation changes.
Collaborate across on-site programs to align shared warehouse space and protect committed turnaround times.
Own QA/QC failure triage and the RMA process end to end, including clearing and preventing RMA backlogs.
Manage on-site variations to rack design and deployment methodology, with documented decisions and traceability.
Ensure rack deployment methodology is followed consistently and captured in site documentation.
Build and maintain the site's production forecast, capacity model, capacity planning, master tracker, dashboards, and operational reporting.
Report on backlog, inventory, demand, material readiness, throughput, and schedule attainment; surface trends and future constraints early.
Reconcile data across demand, materials, and production systems to find discrepancies and improve data integrity.
Define KPIs for site health — schedule attainment, material readiness, RMA cycle time, warehouse utilization — and report against them in numbers, not adjectives.
Develop and maintain short- and long-range capacity-versus-demand models to evaluate deployment feasibility, identify constraints, support site intake decisions, and prevent commitments that exceed operational capacity.
Act as the site coordination point across internal engineering and operations teams, the integration partner, product quality engineering, capacity planning, demand planning, logistics, and site build teams.
Lead production and materials reviews, capacity discussions, and issue resolution forums.
Communicate status, risk, capacity constraints, and decisions to leadership, including executive-level readouts on production plans and revised dates.
Broker alignment between teams with competing priorities and overlapping ownership claims, and resolve boundary disputes rather than escalating them repeatedly.
Coach and support on-site materials and coordination staff; distribute workload deliberately to prevent single-point dependency and burnout.
Proactively identify material constraints, throughput bottlenecks, warehouse capacity limits, resource gaps, and system gaps.
Develop mitigation, recovery, and contingency plans that protect deployment commitments.
Assess and document downstream impact of demand decommits, forecast changes, design changes, and schedule shifts.
Drive escalations to closure with clear ownership, decisions, and impact recorded.
Plan for resource continuity — contract end dates, site ramp-down, and transition of scope to follow-on sites.
Replace manual spreadsheet-driven planning with integrated, automated tooling; manual recalculation of demand and materials is a known failure mode at existing sites and reducing it is an explicit expectation of this role.
Build AI-assisted tools, dashboards, and knowledge resources for forecasting, reporting, and decision support, and validate their outputs before operational use.
Capture lessons learned from established sites and convert them into reusable standards, playbooks, and process documentation.

Benefits

Medical provided through UHC (PPO, HSA, Surest options) / Medical provided through Kaiser (HMO option only) for California employees only
Dental provided through UHC Nationwide
Vision provided by UHC
Flexible Spending Account for Health & Dependent Care
Pre-Tax Account for Commuter Benefit/Parking & Transit (location-specific)
Continuing Education and Professional Development via various integrated platforms, e.g. Udemy and Coursera
Corporate Wellness Program provided by Goomi Group
Employee Assistance Program
Wellness Days
401k Plan
Basic and Supplemental Life Insurance
Short Term & Long Term Disability
Critical Illness, Critical Hospital, and Voluntary Accident Insurance
Tuition Reimbursement (available 6 months after start date, capped)
Paid Time Off (accrued and prorated, maximum of 120 hours annually)
Paid Holidays
Any other statutory leaves, paid time, or other ancillary benefits required under state and federal law