Lead Mechanical Engineer, Deployment Engineering

Fluidstack

$300K — $340K *
Technical Services
5 - 7 years of experience
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering or related field
  • Experience in field deployment and commissioning of mechanical systems
  • Proven skills in commissioning and troubleshooting cooling systems
  • Experience building commissioning standards and acceptance test procedures
  • Ability to diagnose and resolve mechanical failures under pressure
  • Mentoring experience for field engineers
  • Willingness to travel up to 50% for site deployments and operations

Responsibilities

  • Lead deployment and commissioning of mechanical and cooling systems across multiple sites
  • Ensure operational reliability of cooling infrastructure and resolve performance issues
  • Develop and maintain commissioning standards and procedures for site teams
  • Act as on-site technical authority during equipment startup and performance validation
  • Establish and enforce mechanical reliability standards for live infrastructure

Benefits

  • Autonomy to own projects from start to finish
  • Fast-paced work environment fostering continual progress
  • Culture of challenging assumptions and prioritizing the best ideas
  • Opportunities for long-term engagement in innovative AI challenges
Full Job Description
How We Operate
  • Extreme ownership. Full autonomy. Own things end to end often taking on scope outside your core role without being asked to get things done.
  • Velocity. We drive everything forward as fast as possible.
  • First principles. Challenge every assumption. Zero analogy thinking, no egos, the best idea wins.
  • Love of the game. The frontier of AI is the most interesting problem of our time. We put in long hours at high intensity to push the frontier forward.
The Deployment Engineering Team

Examples of key problems the team is working on
  • Turn 50GW+ of design into 50GW+ of built, running infrastructure. The Design team sets the blueprint. This team is where it survives contact with a live construction schedule and becomes a real site.
  • Close the gap between engineering-complete and operations-ready. A design that passes review still has to survive commissioning, integration, and energization, and that gap is where deployment work lives.
  • Make the tenth site faster and cleaner than the first. Every deployment feeds field learnings back into the standards, so a one-off fight at one site becomes a repeatable playbook at the next.
  • Hand off infrastructure that's reliable from the moment it goes live. AI compute workloads don't tolerate a shaky handover, so what this team commissions has to run right the day operations takes over.


Role Scope
  • Lead end-to-end deployment and commissioning of mechanical and cooling systems across concurrent sites, from pre-deployment readiness through live handover to operations.
  • Own operational reliability of cooling infrastructure across the live fleet, diagnosing thermal performance issues and implementing fixes that hold at scale.
  • Build and maintain mechanical commissioning standards, acceptance test procedures, and runbooks for cooling systems (chillers, CDUs, direct liquid cooling) that site teams run independently.
  • Serve as the on-site technical authority through equipment startup, performance validation, and load testing, resolving field failures before they delay handover.
  • Set and enforce mechanical reliability standards across the portfolio: preventive maintenance thresholds, redundancy validation, and performance benchmarks under live AI load.


What We're Looking For

The below is a starting point. We always make space for exceptional people, so if you don't fit this role exactly, tell us where you would.
  • You hold a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related field.
  • You've owned field deployment and commissioning of mechanical systems on data centers or high-density mission-critical facilities.
  • You've commissioned and troubleshot cooling systems (chilled water, CDUs, or direct liquid cooling) on live or commissioning-phase infrastructure.
  • You've built commissioning standards, acceptance test procedures, and maintenance runbooks that hold up at a portfolio level.
  • You've diagnosed and resolved mechanical failures and thermal performance issues on live infrastructure under time pressure.
  • You've mentored mechanical engineers in the field and built their ability to commission independently.
  • You can travel to deployment and operations sites up to 50 percent of the time.
  • Bonus: Professional Engineer (PE) license. Direct-to-chip or liquid cooling operational experience at AI-class rack densities. Experience building or leading a mechanical commissioning or reliability program across multiple concurrent sites. Familiarity with CMMS platforms, predictive maintenance tools, and thermal monitoring systems. Proficiency in CFD tools (6SigmaET, Icepak) for operational troubleshooting and thermal validation.


Compensation: $300,000 - $340,000 per year, depending on experience, skills, qualifications, and location. Offers equity in the form of stock options.

We are committed to pay equity and transparency.

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