Staff Mechanical Engineer

Lambda•San Francisco, CA

4d•$349,000 - $465,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, is a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers. Our customers range from AI researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers. Lambda's mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give everyone the power of superintelligence. One person, one GPU. If you'd like to build the world's best AI cloud, join us. Note: This position requires presence in our San Francisco or San Jose office location 4 days per week; Lambda’s designated work from home day is currently Tuesday.

Requirements

Experience designing mechanical systems for data centers, mission-critical facilities, central plants, or large industrial environments.
Understand hydronic systems, heat transfer, chilled-water systems, heat rejection, pumping, filtration, and water treatment.
Can develop and review P&IDs, mechanical layouts, equipment schedules, technical specifications, and engineering calculations.
Understand mechanical redundancy, failure domains, maintainability, and operational requirements.
Can evaluate system performance across changing weather conditions and compute loads.
Understand applicable mechanical, plumbing, energy, and safety codes and standards.
Can balance cooling performance, efficiency, water consumption, reliability, cost, and delivery schedule.
Communicate clearly across engineering, construction, operations, vendors, and executive stakeholders.
Hold a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering or equivalent practical experience.

Nice To Haves

Experience designing hyperscale, colocation, HPC, or AI data centers.
Experience with high-density GPU infrastructure and direct-to-chip liquid cooling.
Experience with CDUs, warm-water cooling, dry coolers, adiabatic systems, or water-side economization.
Familiarity with CFD, Pipe-Flo, AFT Fathom, Revit, or comparable engineering tools.
Experience with water chemistry, glycol systems, filtration, flushing, and cooling-system cleanliness requirements.
Experience supporting factory testing, commissioning, integrated systems testing, or failure investigations.
Professional Engineer licensure or progress toward licensure.

Responsibilities

Own mechanical design standards and reference architectures for large-scale AI data centers.
Develop cooling architectures for greenfield, retrofit, and partner-operated facilities.
Design central plants, heat-rejection systems, hydronic distribution, air-cooling systems, and direct-to-chip liquid-cooling infrastructure.
Perform cooling-load, heat-transfer, hydraulic, pressure-drop, psychrometric, and equipment-capacity calculations.
Develop and review P&IDs, equipment schedules, layouts, specifications, sequences of operation, and basis-of-design documents.
Select and size chillers, cooling towers, dry coolers, pumps, heat exchangers, CRAHs, CDUs, piping, valves, and water-treatment systems.
Evaluate designs for capacity, redundancy, failure isolation, maintainability, efficiency, water use, constructability, cost, and schedule.
Translate GPU, rack, and cluster thermal requirements into facility cooling requirements.
Review partner designs, vendor submittments, construction documents, and equipment packages for compliance with Lambda standards.
Coordinate mechanical interfaces with electrical systems, controls, building structure, hardware engineering, construction, commissioning, and operations.
Support equipment selection, long-lead procurement, factory testing, construction sequencing, commissioning, and system bring-up.
Investigate cooling failures and operational risks, driving lessons back into future designs.
Travel to project sites, manufacturers, and partner facilities as needed.