Lambda

Staff Mechanical Engineer

Lambda • $120K — $145K *
San Jose, CA 95123In-Person
Enterprise Technology
5 - 7 years of experience
Today
Be an Early Applicant
Job Overview by Ladders

Qualifications

  • Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering or equivalent experience.
  • Experience designing mechanical systems for data centers or mission-critical facilities.
  • Understanding of hydronic systems, heat transfer, and chillers.
  • Ability to develop and review technical specifications and engineering calculations.
  • Familiarity with applicable mechanical, plumbing, and safety codes.
  • Strong communication skills across engineering and operational teams.
  • Understanding of mechanical redundancy and operational requirements.

Responsibilities

  • Own mechanical design standards for AI data centers.
  • Develop cooling architectures for various facility types.
  • Design heat-rejection and hydronic distribution systems.
  • Perform essential cooling-load and equipment-capacity calculations.
  • Select and size cooling equipment and systems.
  • Evaluate designs for efficiency, cost, and maintainability.
  • Translate thermal requirements into cooling system designs.

Benefits

  • Generous cash and equity compensation.
  • Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents.
  • Wellness and commuter stipends for select roles.
  • 401k Plan with a 2% company match.
  • Flexible paid time off plan that encourages real use.
Full Job Description
*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.

What You'll Do
  • 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 submittals, 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.

You
  • Have 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 Have
  • 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.

Salary Range Information

The annual salary range for this position has been set based on market data and other factors. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description.

About Lambda
  • Founded in 2012, with 500+ employees, and growing fast
  • Our investors notably include TWG Global, US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), Andra Capital, SGW, Andrej Karpathy, ARK Invest, Fincadia Advisors, G Squared, In-Q-Tel (IQT), KHK & Partners, NVIDIA, Pegatron, Supermicro, Wistron, Wiwynn, Gradient Ventures, Mercato Partners, SVB, 1517, and Crescent Cove
  • We have research papers accepted at top machine learning and graphics conferences, including NeurIPS, ICCV, SIGGRAPH, and TOG
  • Our values are publicly available: https://lambda.ai/careers
  • We offer generous cash & equity compensation
  • Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents
  • Wellness and commuter stipends for select roles
  • 401k Plan with 2% company match (USA employees)
  • Flexible paid time off plan that we all actually use

About Lambda

Lambda is an online education company that offers courses in computer science and software engineering. The company was founded in 2017 by Austen Allred and Ben Nelson. Lambda's courses are designed to be accessible to anyone, regardless of their background or prior experience. The company's mission is to provide high-quality education that leads to well-paying jobs in the tech industry. Lambda has partnerships with a number of companies, including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, and has helped thousands of students launch careers in tech.
Learn more about Lambda
Size
1,000 employees
Industry
Education, Government & Non-Profit
Net Income
-$5 million
Founded
2017
5 Year Trend
+100%
Revenue
$100 million
NASDAQ
LMBDA
* Ladders Estimates

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