Senior Mechanical Controls Engineer

Socket.dev; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, seeks a controls-engineering professional to design and commission mechanical controls for data centers. You will lead sequences of operation, sensor selection, and BMS integration, collaborating with mechanical, electrical, network, and commissioning teams.

You will define and refine control architectures for central plants, cooling loops, and plant equipment, while supporting testing, startup, and ongoing optimization at scale.

Qualifications

• Have experience designing or commissioning mechanical controls for data centers, mission-critical facilities, central plants, or industrial environments.
• Understand chilled-water, condenser-water, heat-rejection, air-cooling, and liquid-cooling systems.
• Can translate operational requirements into clear, testable control behavior.

Responsibilities

• Own controls standards and reference architectures for mechanical systems supporting large-scale AI data centers.
• Develop control narratives, sequences of operation, points lists, alarm matrices, cause-and-effect diagrams, and controller requirements.
• Define automation for central cooling plants, heat-rejection systems, pumps, heat exchangers, CRAHs, CDUs, liquid-cooling loops, valves, and associated equipment.
• Design system behavior for startup, shutdown, maintenance, component failure, utility loss, and recovery.
• Establish requirements for sensors, actuators, meters, control panels, PLCs, DDC controllers, gateways, and operator interfaces.
• Define BMS integration, mechanical telemetry, trending, alarming, data retention, and interfaces with other operational systems.
• Review partner designs, vendor submittals, control drawings, network architectures, and equipment packages for compliance with Lambda standards.
• Coordinate controls requirements across mechanical, electrical, network, hardware, construction, commissioning, and operations teams.
• Support factory testing, site acceptance testing, commissioning, integrated systems testing, and cooling-system bring-up.
• Troubleshoot control-loop instability, sensor errors, communication failures, nuisance alarms, and sequence deficiencies.
• Incorporate commissioning results and operating lessons into future designs and control standards.
• Travel to project sites, manufacturers, and partner facilities as needed.

Skills

Mechanical controls design

Data center experience

PLC/DDC/BMS knowledge

Sensors and actuators

Sequencing and operation procedures

Cross-functional communication

Travel capable

Education

Bachelor’s degree in mechanical, electrical, controls, or systems engineering

Tools

BACnet

Modbus

OPC UA

P&ID drawings

Control diagrams

Job description

Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, is a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers. Our customers range from AI researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers. Lambda's mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give everyone the power of superintelligence. One person, one GPU.

If you'd like to build the world's best AI cloud, join us.

*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 controls standards and reference architectures for mechanical systems supporting large-scale AI data centers.

• Develop control narratives, sequences of operation, points lists, alarm matrices, cause-and-effect diagrams, and controller requirements.

• Define automation for central cooling plants, heat-rejection systems, pumps, heat exchangers, CRAHs, CDUs, liquid-cooling loops, valves, and associated equipment.

• Design system behavior for startup, shutdown, maintenance, component failure, utility loss, and recovery.

• Establish requirements for sensors, actuators, meters, control panels, PLCs, DDC controllers, gateways, and operator interfaces.

• Define BMS integration, mechanical telemetry, trending, alarming, data retention, and interfaces with other operational systems.

• Review partner designs, vendor submittals, control drawings, network architectures, and equipment packages for compliance with Lambda standards.

• Coordinate controls requirements across mechanical, electrical, network, hardware, construction, commissioning, and operations teams.

• Support factory testing, site acceptance testing, commissioning, integrated systems testing, and cooling-system bring-up.

• Troubleshoot control-loop instability, sensor errors, communication failures, nuisance alarms, and sequence deficiencies.

• Incorporate commissioning results and operating lessons into future designs and control standards.

• Travel to project sites, manufacturers, and partner facilities as needed.

You

• Have experience designing or commissioning mechanical controls for data centers, mission-critical facilities, central plants, or industrial environments.

• Understand chilled-water, condenser-water, heat-rejection, air-cooling, and liquid-cooling systems.

• Can develop and review sequences of operation, P&IDs, control diagrams, wiring diagrams, points lists, and functional test procedures.

• Understand PLC, DDC, and BMS architectures and common protocols such as BACnet, Modbus, and OPC UA.

• Have experience with instrumentation, sensor selection, control loops, alarms, interlocks, and equipment safeties.

• Understand how mechanical systems should respond during equipment failures, power events, and changing thermal loads.

• Can translate operational requirements into clear, testable control behavior.

• Communicate effectively with engineers, programmers, vendors, commissioning teams, and facility operators.

• Hold a bachelor’s degree in mechanical, electrical, controls, or systems engineering, or equivalent practical experience.

Nice to Have

• Experience with hyperscale, colocation, HPC, or AI data centers.

• Experience controlling high-density liquid-cooling systems, CDUs, or warm-water cooling loops.

• Familiarity with platforms from Siemens, Schneider Electric, Johnson Controls, Honeywell, Rockwell, or Tridium.

• Experience with OT networking, controls cybersecurity, controller redundancy, or high-availability automation.

• Familiarity with EPMS design, electrical systems SOOs and monitoring

• Experience with factory acceptance testing, integrated systems testing, and live facility bring-up.

• Familiarity with ASHRAE, ISA, and data center controls standards.

• Experience using trend data or analytics to diagnose and optimize mechanical-system performance.

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

Equal Opportunity Employer

Lambda is an Equal Opportunity employer. Applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, age, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation and identity, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship, or any other factors prohibited by local, state, or federal law.