Data Center Controls Engineer

Anthropic; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 320,000 - 405,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation

Equity donation matching (optional)

Vacation and parental leave

Flexible working hours

SF office

Job summary

Anthropic is seeking an experienced Datacenter Controls Engineer to design, implement, and optimize control systems across its global datacenter infrastructure. You will work on liquid cooling, HVAC, power monitoring, and building automation to support AI scale.

The role requires deep automation expertise and collaboration with cross-functional teams to deliver secure, high-availability solutions. You will develop SCADA/BMS applications using Ignition or Niagara/Tridium, select instrumentation

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering or equivalent practical experience.
• 7+ years of experience in control systems design and implementation for industrial automation, building automation, or datacenter systems.
• Deep familiarity with industrial communication protocols: BACnet, Modbus TCP/IP, OPC-UA, MQTT, SNMP, Ethernet-IP.
• Experience with instrumentation selection, control panel design, and control system integration.
• Working knowledge of network architecture including subnets, VLANs, firewall rules, and IP management.
• Strong documentation skills and ability to work effectively in cross-functional teams.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement multi-site controls architecture across Anthropic's global datacenter facilities.
• Define network topology, redundancy, and high-availability requirements for control nodes and servers.
• Develop and maintain standardized frameworks for BACnet, Modbus TCP/IP, OPC-UA, MQTT, and SNMP communication layers.
• Ensure integration between control systems and enterprise networks while maintaining security boundaries and cybersecurity frameworks for industrial control systems.
• Develop SCADA/BMS applications using Ignition, Niagara/Tridium, or similar HMI/supervisory systems.
• Select and specify instrumentation including sensors, transmitters, actuators, and control valves for liquid cooling loops, power distribution, and environmental monitoring.
• Architect and supervise deployment of centralized telemetry systems capable of storing high-resolution time-series data from power, thermal, and environmental sensors.
• Develop intuitive dashboards and visualization layers using Ignition SCADA, Grafana, or comparable frameworks for facilities, operations, and engineering teams.
• Leverage control systems to enable performance insights, fault detection, and predictive maintenance capabilities.
• Participate in new design and construction projects to ensure controls and BMS standards are embedded from design through commissioning.
• Define and review controls and instrumentation specifications in architectural and MEP packages.
• Create comprehensive technical documentation including P&IDs, control narratives, sequence of operations, and commissioning procedures.
• Validate installed systems during commissioning for proper network configuration, protocol compatibility, and data visibility.

Skills

Industrial automation

Control systems design

BACnet

Modbus TCP/IP

OPC-UA

MQTT

SNMP

Networking

Documentation

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Engineering

Equivalent practical experience

Tools

Ignition

Niagara/Tridium

Wonderware

Grafana

SQL Server

InfluxDB

TimescaleDB

Node-RED

Job description

Remote-Friendly (Travel Required) | San Francisco, CA

About Anthropic

Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the Role

Anthropic is seeking an experienced Datacenter Controls Engineer to join our Datacenter Infrastructure team. In this role, you will design, implement, and optimize control systems that support our global datacenter infrastructure, enabling the reliable operation of AI at scale.

You will work on cutting-edge control systems managing critical datacenter operations including liquid cooling systems (CDUs/CDMs), HVAC, electrical power monitoring systems, and building automation systems. This position requires both technical depth in industrial automation and the ability to collaborate across disciplines to deliver integrated solutions for high-density AI compute infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement multi-site controls architecture across Anthropic's global datacenter facilities
• Define network topology, redundancy, and high-availability requirements for control nodes and servers
• Develop and maintain standardized frameworks for BACnet, Modbus TCP/IP, OPC-UA, MQTT, and SNMP communication layers
• Ensure integration between control systems and enterprise networks while maintaining security boundaries and compliance with cybersecurity frameworks for industrial control systems

Control System Design & Implementation

• Define, design, develop, and implement control systems for datacenter mechanical, electrical, and building management systems with focus on AI compute environments
• Develop SCADA/BMS applications using platforms including Ignition, Niagara/Tridium, or similar HMI/supervisory systems
• Select and specify instrumentation including sensors, transmitters, actuators, and control valves for liquid cooling loops, power distribution, and environmental monitoring
• Architect and supervise deployment of centralized telemetry systems capable of storing high-resolution time-series data from power, thermal, and environmental sensors
• Develop intuitive dashboards and visualization layers using Ignition SCADA, Grafana, or comparable frameworks for facilities, operations, and engineering teams
• Leverage control systems to enable performance insights, fault detection, and predictive maintenance capabilities

Construction Integration & Documentation

• Participate in new design and construction projects to ensure controls and BMS standards are embedded from design through commissioning
• Define and review controls and instrumentation specifications in architectural and MEP packages
• Create comprehensive technical documentation including P&IDs, control narratives, sequence of operations, and commissioning procedures
• Validate installed systems during commissioning for proper network configuration, protocol compatibility, and data visibility

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Engineering (Electrical, Controls, Mechanical, Computer) or equivalent practical experience
• 7+ years of experience in control systems design and implementation for industrial automation, building automation, or datacenter systems
• Deep familiarity with industrial communication protocols: BACnet, Modbus TCP/IP, OPC-UA, MQTT, SNMP, Ethernet-IP
• Experience with instrumentation selection, control panel design, and control system integration
• Working knowledge of network architecture including subnets, VLANs, firewall rules, and IP management
• Strong documentation skills and ability to work effectively in cross-functional teams

Preferred Qualifications

• 10+ years in datacenter, critical facilities, or mission-critical infrastructure environments
• Experience with liquid cooling systems including CDUs, CDMs, and cooling tower control systems
• Background in high-density rack integration environments and AI/ML compute infrastructure
• Experience designing or deploying BMS/SCADA systems such as Ignition, Niagara/Tridium, Wonderware, or similar
• Strong background in database integration (SQL Server, InfluxDB, PostgreSQL, TimescaleDB) and data logging architecture
• Proficiency in Python or scripting for automation/configuration within SCADA/BMS frameworks
• Experience deploying multi-site redundant controls servers with high-availability requirements
• Professional Engineering (PE) license or vendor certifications (Schneider, Rockwell, Siemens)
• Knowledge of relevant codes and standards: ASHRAE, NFPA, IEEE, ISA
• Familiarity with Grafana, Node-RED, Ignition Perspective, or equivalent visualization tools
• Experience bridging cloud orchestration systems with facility-level power controls and load management (e.g., DCIM, BMS, EPMS)

Logistics

Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required field of study:A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship:We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.

$320,000 - $405,000 USD

How we're different

We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.

The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.

Come work with us!

Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues.

Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage:Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process.

As set forth in Anthropic’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

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