Staff Mechanical Engineer

Lambda; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 349,000 - 465,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health, dental, and vision coverage

Wellness stipend

Commuter stipend

401k with 2% match

Flexible paid time off

Job summary

Lambda is seeking a Mechanical Engineer specialized in cooling design for large-scale AI data centers. You will own mechanical design standards, develop cooling architectures for greenfield and retrofit projects, and design central plants and direct-to-chip liquid cooling systems.

You’ll perform complex thermal calculations and review P&IDs and equipment specifications. You will collaborate across electrical, controls, and construction teams, ensure compliance with Lambda standards, and travel

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering or equivalent practical experience.
• 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.
• Understand mechanical redundancy, failure domains, maintainability, and operational requirements.

Responsibilities

• 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.

Skills

Data center cooling design

Hydronic systems

Thermal load calculations

P&IDs review

Engineering calculations

Cross-functional communication

Mechanical redundancy analysis

Systems commissioning

Education

Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering

Tools

CFD

Pipe-Flo

AFT Fathom

Revit

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 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

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.

Compensation Range: $349K - $465K