Founding Mechanical Engineer

Madrone•San Francisco, CA

13d•$150,000 - $190,000

About The Position

Madrone is building the thermal infrastructure required for artificial intelligence to tackle humanity’s most complex challenges - from curing cancer to achieving room-temperature superconductivity. Power is the primary constraint on data center growth, and currently up to 40% of power is lost to cooling at current GW-scale sites. Madrone’s first product is a modular, hyper-efficient facility water cooling system for hyperscale data centers. It allows cooling to the dew point, lower than anyone else can without using mechanical chillers. We’re assembling an exceptional team to push the frontier of heat rejection on Earth. We are hiring a Founding Mechanical Engineer to take our cooling technology from prototypes to full-scale, field-deployed systems. You will own mechanical design across thermodynamics, fluid systems, heat exchangers, packaging, manufacturing, testing, and commissioning. This is a highly hands-on role: you will move between first-principles analysis, DFM, CAD, supplier conversations, prototype assembly, instrumentation, and field testing. You will work directly with the founders and have substantial influence over the product, engineering culture, supplier base, and technical roadmap.

Requirements

Significant experience designing and shipping complex thermal-fluid hardware.
Strong fundamentals in thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat and mass transfer, and mechanical design.
Experience owning hardware through the full development cycle
A bachelor’s degree or higher in mechanical engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
Proficiency with CAD and engineering drawings
Experience building and debugging physical systems.
Ability to operate effectively with incomplete information and rapidly changing requirements.
Clear written and verbal communication skills.

Nice To Haves

Data center facility water systems or high-density compute infrastructure.
Thermal system design.
CFD, FEA, system simulation, or design optimization.
Sheet-metal designs.
Supplier qualification, contract manufacturing, pilot production, and cost reduction.
Startup or other fast-paced hardware development environments.

Responsibilities

Lead the mechanical architecture and detailed design of systems scaling from 1 kW prototypes to 1 MW cooling platforms.
Develop thermodynamic, psychrometric, heat-transfer, and hydraulic models to predict system performance across a wide range of ambient conditions.
Design and integrate heat exchangers, pumps, fans or blowers, valves, piping, filtration, water-treatment components, sensors, and structural assemblies.
Produce CAD models, engineering drawings, bills of materials, tolerance specifications, and manufacturing documentation.
Build and instrument prototypes, define test plans, analyze results, and rapidly iterate based on measured performance.
Select materials and components appropriate for corrosion, water quality, temperature, pressure, vibration, and long operating lifetimes.
Lead design reviews, failure-mode analysis, root-cause investigations, and reliability improvements.
Source components and work directly with fabricators, contract manufacturers, and other suppliers to move from one-off builds into repeatable production.
Support system installation, commissioning, troubleshooting, and validation at customer sites.
Collaborate closely with electrical, controls, software, manufacturing, and customer engineering teams.
Help recruit and mentor the mechanical engineering organization as Madrone grows.