Listing evidence and provenance
- Source
- Greenhouse View original listing
- Freshness
- Open in the current public read path; this is not an employer guarantee.Last observed October 5, 2026
- Classification
- Modern power-system classification not yet published for this listing.Legacy source industry field: Climate Technology
- Pay provenance
- Estimated benchmark; not employer-provided
Job Description
Commissioning Director
Key Responsibilities
- Commissioning is the last gate between capital spent and capacity earning. On contracted AI campuses it is a contractual event with dates, evidence requirements and remedies attached — not an internal quality exercise.
- As a Director of Commissioning you own that gate. You will set the single standard by which every megawatt Nscale builds is proven, hold the authority to accept or refuse capacity on the company’s behalf, and build a commissioning and operational readiness function that scales from a 20MW first phase to multi-gigawatt campuses without the standard slipping as volume rises.
- This is a build role. The function does not yet exist in its target form — the standard, the tooling, the team and the operating model are all to be created. Our portfolio spans Norway, the UK, Finland and the United States, and the technical scope is harder than conventional colocation: closed-loop direct-to-chip liquid cooling at high rack densities, Arctic and extreme-ambient operation, high-voltage grid interfaces, on-site generation and storage, and heat-reuse obligations.
- Author and own the Group Commissioning Execution Standard — the L0–L6 framework, test scripts, witness and evidence rules, defect taxonomy and turnover package specification — and make sure it is applied, not just published.
- Hold the acceptance gate: no system is energised, accepted or handed over anywhere in the group without your sign-off, and you hold that position under schedule and commercial pressure.
- Select, deploy and govern a single commissioning management platform so evidence, defects and progress are visible in one place across the portfolio.
- Make sure commissioning is built into every project master programme from the outset, and give early, evidence-based warning when energisation or acceptance dates are at risk.
- Work with Procurement, Legal and Delivery so acceptance criteria, witness rights, test obligations and turnover standards are written into EPC and OEM packages before they are let.
- Own the methodology for closed-loop direct-to-chip liquid cooling — CDU factory testing, secondary-loop flushing and passivation, water chemistry, per-rack flow balancing, leak detection, failover under thermal transient.
- Own high-consequence electrical testing: HV energisation sequencing with network operators, protection coordination and primary injection, black-building and utility-failure testing at full simulated load.
- Recruit, develop and retain a scarce, internationally mobile discipline — including in locations where the local specialist market is thin — and build succession so no hall depends on one individual.
- Own operational readiness and the transfer to Operations: complete as-builts and O&M, populated CMMS, spares on site, tested SOPs, EOPs and MOPs, and operations staff assessed as competent before capacity is accepted.
- Set the safe-systems-of-work regime for energisation and testing across every jurisdiction we operate in, and satisfy each local regulatory and inspection regime without running three parallel ways of working.
- Lead the commissioning relationship with tenants and their acceptance teams, and support lenders, insurers and certification bodies where commissioning evidence is a diligence item.
Requirements
- A substantial career in critical facilities engineering — indicatively 15+ years — including 8+ years leading commissioning at programme or portfolio level rather than on a single project.
- Owner-side or client-side accountability for accepting large-scale data centre capacity. Contractor-side commissioning leadership alone will not be enough; this role has to hold a gate against the party delivering the work.
- Personally led integrated systems testing (L5) through to acceptance on at least two hyperscale or AI data centre projects of 50MW or greater.
- Direct experience of high-density liquid-cooled deployments — direct-to-chip, CDUs, secondary loops, water chemistry — or closely adjacent depth and clear evidence of learning an unfamiliar technology quickly and rigorously.
- High-voltage and medium-voltage commissioning experience, including energisation sequencing with network operators and protection coordination.
- Built and led multi-disciplinary technical teams across borders, time zones and languages.
- Contract literacy: EPC contracting forms, acceptance and handover mechanisms, witness rights, warranty provisions and the evidentiary basis of claims.
- Experience across more than one regulatory jurisdiction, and the judgement to build one standard that satisfies several regimes rather than three parallel ones.
- A degree in electrical or mechanical engineering, or equivalent demonstrable expertise.
- Credible at both ends of the organisation — able to hold a technical argument with a lead commissioning engineer on site in the morning and present acceptance risk to the Executive in the afternoon.
- Willing and able to travel internationally at 60–70%, including to remote Arctic sites in winter conditions.
- Right to work in the UK or Norway, or eligibility for sponsorship.
- Nordic market experience and familiarity with NEK 400, FSE and the DSB regime; Norwegian or another Scandinavian language.
- Tenant acceptance testing with a major hyperscale counterparty.
- Exposure to Uptime Institute certification, lenders’ technical adviser processes or insurer-driven assurance regimes.
- Hands-on use of commissioning management platforms and Primavera P6.
- BESS, on-site generation or heat-reuse offtake commissioning.
- Chartered or professionally registered engineer (CEng, PE or equivalent).
- Experience in a rapidly scaling business, where the standard has to be built while the programme is already running.
Ready to Apply?
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