Staff Engineer, Data Center

LinkedIn • Mountain View, CA

16d • Hybrid

About The Position

At LinkedIn, our approach to flexible work is centered on trust and optimized for culture, connection, clarity, and the evolving needs of our business. The work location of this role is hybrid, meaning it will be performed both from home and from a LinkedIn office on select days, as determined by the business needs of the team. This role will be based in Mountain View, CA, Hillsboro, OR, Richardson, TX, Plano, TX or Manassas, VA. The Data Center Engineering (DCE) team designs, builds, and maintains the physical facilities and infrastructure that support critical IT systems, applications, and data. Data Center Engineers ensure the stability, reliability, safety, and security of data center operations to meet stringent uptime and performance targets. They lead the design, construction, commissioning, and lifecycle maintenance of physical infrastructure, drive Root Cause Analysis (RCA) investigations, implement corrective actions and collaborate with colocation providers while enforcing safety codes, industry standards, and best practices. Mechanical and Electrical (M&E) Engineers within the DCE team apply deep electrical and mechanical engineering expertise to design, construct, and maintain data center facilities, ensuring optimal efficiency and resilience across power and cooling systems.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical, Mechanical, Industrial or Process Engineering
• 5+ years of experience in defining, designing, and operating data center critical infrastructure.
• 3+ years in direct data center construction experience.
• Experience creating and/or executing large-scale critical infrastructure maintenance and reliability programs.
• Ability to create clear, consistent, and understandable technical documentation to be leveraged by partner teams.
• Professional certifications such as Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE), Certified Maintenance & Reliability Professional (CMRP), Professional Engineer (PE), Chartered Engineer (CEng), or Project Management Professional (PMP)

Nice To Haves

• Doctorate Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Materials Engineering, Reliability Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or related field AND 2+ years technical project management, program management, mission-critical electrical infrastructure.
• 12+ years in direct data center construction experience at a data center provider or constructor.
• Experience in management, engineering, or operations of hyperscale datacenter critical environments.
• Proficient in AutoCad and/or Revit as well as implementation or maintenance of DCIM applications.
• Ability to manage, prioritize and successfully execute multiple concurrent mission-critical projects and communicate effectively to drive standards and consensus across multiple levels of the organization.

Responsibilities

• Lead technical evaluation of data center engineering documents, expansions, and data hall fit-outs, including review of electrical one-line diagrams, mechanical system designs, and infrastructure layouts.
• Partner with DC providers to measure and enforce lease SLAs, assess power and cooling capacity, and ensure compliance with LinkedIn’s redundancy, resiliency, and availability standards.
• Develop and maintain system-level resiliency and redundancy models that define load distribution, failover sequences, and power/cooling interdependencies to ensure infrastructure designs meet LinkedIn’s Tier-level and N+X performance criteria.
• Support design and construction of new data centers, expansions, and retrofits., ensuring that electrical and mechanical systems meet design intent, testing protocols, commissioning standards, and overall project delivery timelines.
• Contribute to LinkedIn’s liquid-cooling deployment strategy, assessing various direct-to-chip cooling technologies, comparing performance tradeoffs and operational impacts, and providing data-driven recommendations to leadership for scalable implementation.
• Create appropriate metrics and tools to support monitoring and maintenance.
• Perform and review advanced electrical and mechanical calculations and analysis, including load flow, short-circuit, coordination, arc-flash, and thermal modeling, to validate system performance and capacity under normal and failure conditions.
• Lead data center design standardization efforts, including development, maintenance, and continuous improvement of the global Basis of Design (BOD) documentation.
• Define and update owner’s requirements, design drawings, technical specifications, bill of materials, and performance benchmarks to ensure consistency across regions and providers.
• Lead and oversee commissioning and Integrated Systems Testing (IST) of new data center spaces, retrofits, and upgrades, verifying end-to-end system performance against design specifications and operational requirements.
• Evaluate, qualify, and approve new electrical and mechanical systems, equipment, and components, including vendor qualification and product testing, to ensure standardization, performance, and long-term reliability across the global data center fleet.
• Develop and manage a comprehensive preventive and corrective maintenance program in collaboration with data center providers, facility operators, and internal operations teams.
• Lead technical investigations and root cause analyses (RCA) for electrical and mechanical incidents, driving corrective actions, design improvements, and global best practices.
• Maintain and govern as-built documentation and technical records, ensuring drawings, submittals, test reports, and configuration data are accurate, version-controlled, and accessible to engineering, capacity planning, and operations teams.
• Review and assess maintenance notifications, Methods of Procedure (MOP), and change events for operational impact, risk classification, and compliance with resiliency standards and maintenance protocols.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with capacity planning, hardware engineering, and network operations teams to forecast infrastructure growth, plan scalable expansion, and optimize power utilization and energy efficiency.
• Provide mentorship and advanced technical training to engineering and operations teams, including troubleshooting electrical and mechanical systems, diagnosing issues such as phase imbalance, protection coordination, thermal irregularities, and liquid-to-chip cooling system failures.

Benefits

• We strongly believe in the well-being of our employees and their families. That is why we offer generous health and wellness programs and time away for employees of all levels.
• LinkedIn is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices.
• The pay range for this role is $133,000 to $216,000.
• Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location.
• This may be different in other locations due to differences in the cost of labor.
• The total compensation package for this position may also include annual performance bonus, stock, benefits and/or other applicable incentive compensation plans.
• For more information, visit https://careers.linkedin.com/benefits.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Mid Level