Data Center Facility Architect

About the Role

Hays is seeking a Data Center Facility Architect to join a large-scale technology and infrastructure program in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This is a contract position for professionals with over 10 years of experience. The role focuses on developing and defining data center architecture strategies, including capacity planning, resiliency, disaster recovery, power, cooling, rack density, and supporting infrastructure. The successful candidate will contribute to designing scalable, resilient, and future-ready facilities for next-generation enterprise, AI, and high-performance computing workloads.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop high-level data center and disaster recovery architectures aligned with business and technology requirements.
• Define capacity requirements for space planning, rack density, power distribution, cooling systems, and supporting infrastructure.
• Assess future infrastructure requirements for compute, GPU, storage, and network growth.
• Define resiliency, redundancy, availability, and disaster recovery strategies.
• Evaluate architectural options and provide recommendations based on scalability, efficiency, resilience, and cost.
• Review technical designs, engineering documentation, and vendor proposals.
• Collaborate with infrastructure, network, facilities, electrical, mechanical, and operations teams.
• Develop architecture standards, capacity models, technical requirements, and design recommendations.
• Support planning and decision-making for mission-critical data center environments.

Required Experience and Skills

• Proven experience of 10+ years with large-scale and high-density data center environments.
• Strong understanding of critical facility operations and infrastructure lifecycle planning.
• Excellent stakeholder management and technical communication skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience supporting AI, HPC, cloud, or enterprise-scale technology environments.
• Experience with Tier III and Tier IV data center environments.
• Exposure to hyperscale, colocation, enterprise, or government data center projects.
• Knowledge of sustainable data center design and energy-efficient infrastructure solutions.
• Experience implementing LEED-certified facility standards and sustainability initiatives.

Work Environment

This role is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and involves working on large-scale data center environments and critical infrastructure projects as part of a significant technology and infrastructure program.