BESS Lead Engineer, Power Generation

Fluidstack; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 330,000 - 390,000; Full time

Job summary

Fluidstack is hiring for a leadership role in grid-scale storage design and integration in the San Francisco area. You will own electrical design for multi-hundred-megawatt storage plants, qualify vendors, and ensure dispatch coordination with on-site generation to maintain a firm load profile.

The role emphasizes NFPA 855 compliance, safety, and end-to-end project delivery from commissioning to performance testing, with strong emphasis on cross-functional collaboration.

Qualifications

• Takes grid-scale storage from single line to energized plant.
• Sizes storage against real duty cycles and plans augmentation.
• Chooses BESS vendors on technical grounds and scrutinizes datasheets.

Responsibilities

• Own the electrical design and sizing of multi-hundred-megawatt storage plants.
• Qualify and dual-source BESS vendors with factory witness testing and warranty terms.
• Define how storage, solar and on-site generation dispatch together.
• Drive NFPA 855 compliance and hazard mitigation analysis with AHJ/insurers.
• Lead commissioning, capacity and round-trip testing and controls integration.

Skills

Grid-scale storage design

Vendor evaluation

NFPA 855 compliance

Education

Professional Engineer license

Tools

PLEXOS

PVsyst

HOMER

PSCAD

ETAP

Job description

About Fluidstack

We exist to make humanity more free. For most of human history, you farmed or you starved. Technology gave people more time for the things they wanted to do, instead of things they had to do. Powerful AI will be the biggest lever for human choice we've ever built - but only if models are aligned with what humanity actually wants. There are groups building AI who don't share these goals. Whoever deploys frontier compute infrastructure fastest will decide whether AI expands human freedom or shrinks it.

We hire people who care deeply about this problem space. If that is you, please apply!

How We Operate

• Be a barrel. Full autonomy. Own things end to end, take on scope without being asked, no permission required to operate outside your core role.
• Insane urgency. We drive everything forward as fast as possible.
• Reason from 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.
• Build something that actually matters. If you're going to spend your time, spend it on something that matters to the world.

Examples of key problems the team is working on

• Build an islanded grid at gigawatt scale, from a blank sheet. Generation, storage and compute running with no utility behind them, where the machine you design is the only thing holding frequency. No playbook exists at this size, so the architecture you set becomes the reference.
• Get power online in months, not years. Interconnection queues are measured in years and we do not have them. Generating our own power is how a site goes from signed lease to live compute inside six months, and the power system is the long pole in that plan.
• Make one power block, then build it a thousand times. A repeatable block and cluster unit, validated once and stamped across the fleet, is the only route to the scale we are targeting. Every bespoke site is schedule we do not get back.
• Design a grid whose largest load answers back. Compute is not passive demand here. Load behaviour, curtailment and shedding are design variables you negotiate and specify, a lever almost no power system engineer has ever been handed.

Role Scope

• Own the electrical design and sizing of multi-hundred-megawatt storage plants, from single line, protection and grounding through power and energy ratings and augmentation strategy, across several concurrent gigawatt sites.
• Qualify and dual-source BESS vendors on technical merit, running factory witness testing, failure mode review and warranty terms alongside supply chain.
• Define how storage, solar and on-site generation dispatch together so the plant holds a firm load profile through resource swings and generator trips.
• Drive NFPA 855 compliance, hazard mitigation analysis and large-scale fire test evidence through the AHJ and the insurer before equipment reaches site.
• Take each plant through commissioning, capacity and round-trip performance testing and controls integration before the first training load connects.

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've taken grid-scale battery storage from single line to energized plant, and you can name the sites and the megawatts.
• You've sized a storage system against a real duty cycle and lived with the result, including the augmentation call and the places the model turned out to be wrong.
• You've chosen between BESS vendors on technical grounds, sat through factory witness testing, and pushed back on a datasheet that did not survive scrutiny.
• You've argued NFPA 855 and hazard mitigation analysis in front of an AHJ or an insurer and got to approval.
• You've integrated storage controls with generation and load so the combined plant behaves as one machine rather than three.
• You write clearly enough that a procurement lead, a fire marshal and a CEO each get the decision they need out of the same document.
• Bonus: Hybrid plant and dispatch modelling (PLEXOS, PVsyst, HOMER). Power system studies (PSCAD, ETAP, protection coordination, arc flash). Behind-the-meter and islanded microgrid operation. Interconnection and market processes (FERC, ERCOT, MISO). Professional Engineer license.

We are committed to pay equity and transparency.

About Fluidstack

We exist to make humanity more free. For most of human history, you farmed or you starved. Technology gave people more time for the things they wanted to do, instead of things they had to do. Powerful AI will be the biggest lever for human choice we've ever built - but only if models are aligned with what humanity actually wants. There are groups building AI who don't share these goals. Whoever deploys frontier compute infrastructure fastest will decide whether AI expands human freedom or shrinks it.

Fluidstack is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer.

All qualified applicants will receive 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.

Fluidstack will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records pursuant to applicable law.

You will receive a confirmation email once your application has successfully been accepted.

If there is an error with your submission and you did not receive a confirmation email, please email [e-mail] with your resume/CV, the role you've applied for, and the date you submitted your application-- someone from our recruiting team will be in touch.

Compensation Range: $330K - $390K