Turbomachinery Engineer, R&D
About The Position
Fluidstack is seeking a Turbomachinery Engineer for its R&D team. The company's mission is to make humanity more free by developing powerful AI, and they are focused on delivering massive amounts of compute infrastructure faster than anyone else. This role is crucial in designing and building the machines necessary for this mission, as the current market cannot supply the required scale. The Thermofluids R&D Team is tackling significant challenges, including rejecting gigawatts of heat, designing and building custom turbomachinery, and owning all thermofluids problems within the fleet, from working fluid architecture to chip-level heat transfer and thermal energy storage. This is an opportunity to work on civilization-scale infrastructure for AI and contribute to a company that values speed, scale, and innovation.
Requirements
- Designed a radial or axial turbomachine that got built and ran, and you were present during its operation.
- Taken a stage from mean-line through CFD and back, understanding the conditions under which CFD results may be inaccurate.
- Worked a rotordynamics problem through to resolution on a real shaft with real bearings.
- Made an architecture call early with incomplete data (e.g., stage count, speed, bearing type) and managed it through build and test.
- Read a test map and modified the design based on the results, rather than disputing the map's accuracy.
- Worked in an environment where the next article was already in production before the last one finished testing.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with turbopumps, gas turbines, and cryogenic turbomachinery (launch vehicles, APUs, aero engines).
- Experience with high-speed motor-driven compressors (magnetic bearings, hermetic, oil-free machines).
- Experience with transcritical and supercritical working fluids (R744, sCO2 cycles).
- Experience with real-gas property libraries (CoolProp, REFPROP).
- Experience with vapor-compression machine design (chillers, heat pumps, industrial refrigeration).
Responsibilities
- Own the aerodynamic design of the centrifugal compressor, from mean-line and 1D through CFD to released impeller, diffuser and return-channel geometry.
- Set the machine architecture, including stage count, shaft speed and diameter, while the working fluid decision is still open and moves the answer substantially.
- Design the expansion turbine that recovers shaft work from the high-side pressure drop, sharing a shaft with the compressor and the motor instead of throwing that energy away across a valve.
- Carry the rotor through rotordynamics, magnetic bearing integration and stress with the structural and mechanical engineers, at the shaft speeds a compact high-speed machine demands.
- Take the machine onto the test stand, and close the loop from a measured performance map back into the aerodynamic design.
Benefits
- Commitment to pay equity and transparency.
- Equal Employment Opportunity Employer status.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Senior
Education Level
No Education Listed
