Senior Mechanical Delivery Engineer

Lambda Inc.; San Francisco, Northern (CA, KY); Hybrid; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Cash & equity compensation

Health, dental, and vision coverage

Wellness and commuter stipends

401k with 2% company match

Flexible paid time off

Job summary

Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, is seeking a Mechanical Field Engineer to own the bring-up, commissioning, and startup of central plants and data-center cooling systems at active construction sites.

You will verify installations, run tests, coordinate with designers, contractors, and HPC teams, and mentor others while ensuring safety and readiness for high-density GPU workloads in a fast-growing AI cloud environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering or equivalent practical experience.
• Significant experience delivering, commissioning, or operating mechanical systems in data centers or mission-critical facilities.
• Ability to interpret P&IDs, equipment submittals, mechanical layouts, and test reports.
• Hands-on site inspections, pressure testing, flushing, water-treatment, and commissioning.
• Understanding of mechanical redundancy, failure isolation, and risk management.
• Ability to determine readiness to safely support high-density compute loads.
• Knowledge of construction safety, lockout/tagout, and startup practices.
• Strong communication with construction teams, engineers, vendors, and operators.
• Williness to travel extensively to active construction sites.

Responsibilities

• Serve as mechanical field engineering owner from construction through commissioning and startup.
• Verify installed systems match approved designs, P&IDs, and Lambda standards.
• Validate equipment installation, piping, supports, valves, and labeling.
• Ensure redundancy, isolation, and monitoring meet design intent.
• Inspect central plants, chillers, pumps, and liquid-cooling loops.
• Review test results including pressure tests, flushing, and balancing.
• Document punch lists and drive closure with stakeholders.
• Witness factory and site acceptance testing and integrated systems testing.
• Develop startup plans, SOPs, MOPs, and commissioning scripts.
• Troubleshoot flow, pressure, temperature, and water quality during bring-up.
• Confirm cooling capacity and control stability before GPU load.
• Coordinate with design engineers, GC, trades, and HPC teams.
• Validate as-built documentation and turnover packages.
• Capture lessons learned and contribute to design standards.
• Mentor engineers and provide senior technical leadership during startup.

Skills

Mechanical systems experience

Hydronic systems knowledge

P&ID interpretation

Site inspections

Mechanical redundancy

Safety startup practices

Field decision making

Clear communication

Travel willingness

Education

Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering or equivalent

Tools

Procore

Bluebeam

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.

What You'll Do

• Serve as Lambda's mechanical field engineering owner from construction completion through commissioning, cooling-system bring-up, and initial compute loading.

• Perform site walkdowns to verify installed mechanical systems against approved designs, P&IDs, specifications, submittals, and Lambda standards.

• Validate equipment installation, piping, supports, valves, instrumentation, insulation, maintenance access, system labeling, and flow direction.

• Confirm that redundancy, isolation boundaries, failure domains, bypasses, drains, vents, and maintenance provisions function as designed.

• Inspect central plants, chillers, cooling towers, dry coolers, pumps, heat exchangers, CRAHs, CDUs, liquid-cooling loops, and associated water systems.

• Review pressure-test, flushing, cleaning, filtration, water-treatment, balancing, and equipment-startup results.

• Identify installation deficiencies, design conflicts, and operational risks; document punch-list items and drive them through closure.

• Witness factory acceptance testing, site acceptance testing, functional performance testing, and integrated systems testing.

• Develop and review startup plans, MOPs, SOPs, EOPs, commissioning scripts, and mechanical safety controls.

• Troubleshoot flow, pressure, temperature, air-removal, fouling, water-quality, equipment, and controls issues during system bring-up.

• Confirm cooling capacity, water quality, control stability, redundancy, and monitoring are ready before GPU infrastructure is placed under load.

• Coordinate with design engineers, general contractors, mechanical trades, equipment manufacturers, commissioning agents, operations, and HPC deployment teams.

• Validate as-built documentation, test reports, equipment settings, commissioning records, and turnover packages before operational handoff.

• Capture field lessons and incorporate them into Lambda's design standards, construction requirements, and site-validation playbooks.

• Mentor other engineers and provide senior technical leadership during high-risk startup and commissioning activities.

You

• Have significant experience delivering, commissioning, or operating mechanical systems in data centers, mission-critical facilities, central plants, or industrial environments.

• Understand hydronic systems, heat transfer, pumping, heat exchangers, heat rejection, air cooling, and liquid cooling.

• Can interpret P&IDs, equipment submittals, mechanical layouts, control sequences, test reports, and construction documentation.

• Have hands‑on experience with site inspections, pressure testing, flushing, water treatment, testing and balancing, equipment startup, or commissioning.

• Understand mechanical redundancy, failure isolation, thermal ride-through, maintainability, and operational risk.

• Can determine whether installed systems are ready to safely support high-density compute loads.

• Understand construction safety, lockout/tagout, stored‑energy hazards, and safe startup practices.

• Can make sound technical decisions in the field, elevate critical issues, and coordinate corrective work under schedule pressure.

• Communicate clearly with construction teams, engineers, vendors, operators, and senior stakeholders.

• Are willing to travel extensively and spend extended periods at active construction and commissioning sites.

• Hold a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering or equivalent practical experience.

Nice to Have

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

• Experience supporting direct-to-chip liquid cooling, CDUs, technology cooling-water loops, or multi-megawatt GPU deployments.

• Knowledge of coolant chemistry, glycol systems, filtration, flushing, passivation, corrosion control, and materials compatibility.

• Familiarity with Level 1-5 commissioning and integrated systems testing.

• Experience using Procore, Bluebeam, commissioning-management platforms, or building-automation trend data.

• Experience investigating cooling failures and leading root‑cause analysis.

• Professional Engineer licensure, commissioning certification, or testing-and-balancing certification.

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.