Test Engineer, R&D

Fluidstack • Austin, TX

1d • $210,000 - $260,000 • Onsite

About The Position

Fluidstack is seeking a Test Engineer for their R&D team. The company's mission is to make humanity more free by delivering massive amounts of AI compute infrastructure faster than anyone else. This involves rethinking every layer of the stack, from acquiring power to designing and operating data centers. The Thermofluids R&D Team is focused on solving critical problems such as rejecting over 10 gigawatts of heat and designing and building custom machines because the current market cannot supply the necessary components at the required scale. The team owns all thermofluids problems, including working fluid and cycle architecture, large-scale heat exchangers, two-phase heat transfer at the chip level, and thermal energy storage. The Test Engineer will play a crucial role in validating compressor performance and ensuring the reliability and safety of the developed machines.

Requirements

• Commissioned a test stand from a bare bay: instrumentation, calibration, shakedown, first article.
• Taken a machine to failure deliberately and had it instrumented well enough to know exactly why it failed.
• Owned an uncertainty budget and could tell someone what your measurement was actually worth.
• Written interlock and abort logic that kept people safe around stored energy, high pressure or high speed.
• Disagreed with a design team about what the data showed, and the data won.
• Carried a failure investigation to a root cause that changed the hardware, rather than to a plausible story that closed the paperwork.

Nice To Haves

• Propulsion and engine test (hot fire, spin pit, green run).
• Rotating machinery test (compressors, turbines, motor test benches).
• High-pressure gas loops and pressure-rated test rigs.
• Data acquisition and rig control (LabVIEW, NI, PLC-based stands).
• Thermal and refrigeration performance testing (COP mapping, calorimetry).

Responsibilities

• Own the test program that takes the compressor from first spin on the stand to a validated performance map the design team can build on.
• Specify and stand up the test cells from an empty bay: motor test bench, high-pressure gas loop, load bank, and every instrument behind them.
• Define the measurement chain and the uncertainty budget, so a claimed isentropic efficiency or COP survives scrutiny from outside this company.
• Write the test plans, interlocks and abort criteria for a machine running at speeds and pressures where a failure is energetic.
• Turn test data into design changes on a weekly cadence, sitting inside the design loop rather than reporting into it.

Benefits

• Pay equity and transparency
• Consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and protected veterans’ status, or any other characteristic protected by law.
• Consideration for employment with a clean criminal record pursuant to applicable law.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed