Data Center Portfolio Lead

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Data Center Portfolio Lead based in the United States. This is a high-impact leadership role responsible for managing a growing portfolio of data center developments supporting large-scale AI infrastructure. You will establish the frameworks, stage gates, and operating cadence that move sites from negotiation through deployment and operational handoff. As the portfolio’s central source of truth, you will bring visibility to milestones, decisions, dependencies, risks, and partner commitments. The role sits at the intersection of site selection, energy, supply chain, engineering, planning, and delivery teams. You will work closely with external development partners while ensuring internal teams remain aligned around critical infrastructure decisions. You will also use automation, AI-driven tooling, and data pipelines to make portfolio reporting faster, more accurate, and scalable. This is an opportunity to shape how complex, capital-intensive infrastructure programs are planned and executed in a rapidly evolving AI environment. Own the overall data center portfolio, maintaining visibility into site status, milestones, decisions, dependencies, open actions, risks, and readiness. Lead recurring portfolio reviews, ensuring stakeholders have a clear view of current supply, critical decisions, downstream impacts, and required actions. Design and operate a comprehensive stage-gate framework defining criteria, approvals, ownership, and decision points from commercial negotiations through lease execution, design, hardware allocation, construction, and operational handoff. Partner with planning and design teams to determine hardware or chip allocation for each site and ensure decisions are made ahead of critical deadlines. Serve as the primary connection between strategic external partners and internal stakeholders, driving accountability against milestones and maintaining consistency across site selection, design, supply chain, and delivery. Establish program-level processes and operating cadences that replace fragmented, case-by-case execution with standardized portfolio management. Develop AI-enabled reporting tools and data pipelines to automate project updates, improve portfolio visibility, and reduce manual reporting effort. Coordinate across multiple concurrent infrastructure initiatives while identifying risks, resolving dependencies, and escalating decisions when needed. Bring structure to ambiguous, high-value infrastructure challenges and help teams maintain momentum toward operational readiness. Requirements: Bachelor’s degree or equivalent combination of education, training, and relevant professional experience in a field related to the role. Proven experience managing data centers or similarly complex, capital-intensive infrastructure programs at scale. Demonstrated experience managing external development partners or strategic relationships, including the ability to establish accountability and drive commitments on both sides. Experience building or operating stage-gate, milestone, governance, or program-management frameworks and successfully driving organizational adoption. Strong understanding of data center infrastructure constraints, including power availability, cooling, facility design, hardware requirements, construction, and delivery timelines. Experience with accelerator or server fleet planning and an understanding of the data center environments required to support these systems is highly valuable. Technical program management experience across multiple concurrent capital projects is a strong advantage. Experience in management consulting, internal strategy, or similar environments where you have brought structure and operating cadence to ambiguous problems. Commercial experience involving data center leases, framework agreements, partner negotiations, or post-signature relationship m