Senior Director, Special Project

Role Overview

As Senior Director, Special Projects, you will lead a construction-focused portfolio of strategic data center projects that improve capacity, reliability, safety, maintainability, and operational readiness across Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Set the strategy, operating model, and governance framework for the Special Projects construction portfolio across assigned sites, regions, or global programs.
• Lead teams responsible for remediation, retrofits, infrastructure upgrades, capacity improvements, lifecycle replacements, and construction-driven operational improvements.
• Own portfolio prioritization, staffing strategy, budget alignment, risk governance, executive reporting, and escalation management.
• Partner with Construction, Engineering, Operations, Reliability, Commissioning, Procurement, Finance, Safety, Security, and vendors to align project scope with operational needs.
• Ensure projects are planned and executed with strong safety controls, change management, outage planning, customer impact awareness, and operational readiness discipline.
• Drive resolution of complex construction, design, commissioning, procurement, schedule, and stakeholder issues.
• Establish portfolio dashboards, KPIs, risk registers, decision logs, and governance cadences for leadership visibility.
• Ensure special projects produce complete turnover documentation, asset data, commissioning evidence, warranty records, and operational handoff materials.
• Lead development of playbooks, standards, templates, and repeatable project delivery practices.
• Build and develop leaders and senior individual contributors, reinforcing accountability, technical rigor, and cross-functional execution.
• Identify systemic risks across the portfolio and sponsor corrective actions that improve reliability, maintainability, and capital efficiency.
• Represent Special Projects in executive reviews, funding discussions, site readiness forums, and major incident or remediation planning.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• 15+ years of experience in construction, data center delivery, mission-critical infrastructure, engineering, facilities operations, capital projects, or special projects leadership.
• 7+ years of people leadership experience, including leading managers, senior project leaders, technical SMEs, or distributed construction teams.
• Experience managing large, complex construction or remediation portfolios in active data center, utility, industrial, manufacturing, or high-availability environments.
• Strong understanding of MEP infrastructure, commissioning, construction closeout, operational handoff, safety, change management, and site operations constraints.
• Demonstrated ability to build governance models, dashboards, operating rhythms, and executive reporting for complex portfolios.
• Bachelor's degree in engineering, construction management, architecture, facilities management, operations, or equivalent practical experience.

Skills And Competencies

• Executive leadership with strong judgment across construction risk, operational impact, schedule, budget, and safety.
• Ability to lead through ambiguity and align multiple executive stakeholders around clear priorities.
• Strong team development, coaching, staffing, and performance management capability.
• Deep cross-functional partnership across build, operate, procure, engineer, and finance functions.
• High accountability for portfolio visibility, issue resolution, governance, and measurable outcomes.
• Continuous improvement mindset focused on scalable standards and repeatable delivery quality.

Preferred Skills / Certifications

• Experience with hyperscale data centers, colocation facilities, utilities, semiconductor, critical manufacturing, or complex infrastructure portfolios.
• PMP, PgMP, CCM, PE, LEED, OSHA, Six Sigma, or related construction, engineering, or project management certification.
• Experience with Primavera, MS Project, Procore, Smartsheet, CMMS, DCIM, BIM, commissioning tools, or portfolio reporting platforms.
• Familiarity with BMS/EPMS, switchgear, UPS, generators, cooling systems, controls, fire/life safety, and operational procedures.
• Experience leading projects in live critical environments with outage, change, safety, access, and customer-impact constraints.