Generation Lead, Fuel-Based Generation

Fluidstack•Austin, TX

6d•$208,000 - $243,000•Remote

About The Position

Fluidstack is building civilization-scale infrastructure for AI, aiming to deliver 10 to 100s of GWs of compute faster than anyone else. This involves acquiring power, designing and building data centers, and operating them. The company is focused on speed and scale, rethinking every layer of the stack to ensure AI expands human freedom. They operate with a culture of autonomy, extreme urgency, first-principles thinking, and a deep commitment to building something that matters. The Power Generation Team is responsible for critical problems such as building islanded grids at gigawatt scale, bringing power online in months, creating repeatable generation blocks, and designing grids where the largest load responds dynamically. This role is for someone who cares deeply about this problem space and wants to be part of building this future.

Requirements

Evaluated competing prime movers from several OEMs for a real project, engines, turbines or fuel cells, and the unit you chose is running today; you can explain why the others lost.
Written an equipment specification and acceptance test procedure, witnessed factory and site acceptance against it, and rejected or held a unit that did not meet it.
Owned distributed generation in operation, in oil and gas, mining, island utilities, CHP or data centers, tracked heat rate, availability and maintenance cost unit by unit, and changed how the units were run to extend overhaul intervals or cut fuel burn.
Integrated fuel-based generation with inverter-based resources on the same bus or in an islanded system, and you can say exactly what the engine needs from the controller and what the controller needs from the engine.
Commissioned generation through first fire and load testing, and you were on site when a unit tripped on a load step and worked out why.
Worked across more than one generation technology or fuel, and you can explain which of your experience transfers to the next one and which does not.
Write clearly enough that an OEM application engineer, a site technician and a CEO each get the decision they need from the same document.

Nice To Haves

Islanded or weak-grid operation with large load swings (mining, offshore, island utilities).
Alternative and blended fuels (hydrogen blends, methanol, dual-fuel diesel).
Electrochemical generation (solid oxide fuel cells, Bloom Energy).
Condition monitoring and predictive maintenance (vibration analysis, oil analysis, borescope inspection).
Emissions controls and their interplay with air permits (SCR, oxidation catalysts).

Responsibilities

Assess and qualify every fuel-oxidation generation technology worth considering for our blocks, from reciprocating engines and turbines to linear generators, and build the qualified technology and supplier list Fluidstack buys from.
Set the standard interface that turns any engine, turbine or fuel cell into one interchangeable node in the site's decentralized generation array, with a defined electrical connection, control signals, telemetry and operating envelope, so the plant controller dispatches it alongside PV and BESS without bespoke integration.
Decide how much fuel-based capacity each block carries, in what unit sizes and with what redundancy, for its firming and backup role, and hold that decision against cost, fuel use and uptime as the block design evolves.
Write the technical specification and acceptance tests for each qualified unit, covering step-load acceptance, ramp rate, minimum load, start reliability, heat rate across the load range and emissions, and witness factory and site acceptance before a unit is accepted.
Own installation and commissioning of the generation fleet through first fire, load testing against real AI load profiles and handover, and fold every field finding back into the specification.
Run the fleet for the longest life and lowest fuel burn, tracking heat rate, availability and maintenance cost per unit, setting overhaul intervals and operating strategy, and feeding what you learn into the next qualification round.
Hire the rotating equipment engineers who extend the qualification, commissioning and operations work across the fleet.