Staff Mechanical Operator

Fluidstack; Indiana; On-site; USD 202,000 - 258,000; Full time

Job summary

Fluidstack is seeking an experienced Data Center Operations professional to own mechanical operations on shift across high-uptime facilities. You will lead troubleshooting, preventive maintenance, and handovers with a focus on reliability and safety.

You'll manage escalation during outages, drive root-cause analysis, and ensure SOPs are kept up to date while maintaining alarm hygiene in BMS and coordinating with vendors for outages and preventive tasks.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of hands-on mechanical or critical facilities operations in data centers.
• Deep operating knowledge of chillers, cooling towers, CRAC/CRAH units, air handlers, pumps, and hydronic loops.
• Fluency in BMS platforms: reading trends, tuning alarms, and diagnosing faults from controls data.
• A track record owning root-cause analysis and preventive maintenance programs at scale.
• Experience as the senior mechanical escalation point on shift, making calls during outages when the runbook runs out.
• Willingness to work rotating shifts and carry on-call responsibility for mechanical outages.
• Bonus: experience with direct-to-chip liquid cooling and CDUs, EPA 608 Universal or equivalent.

Responsibilities

• Own mechanical operations on shift as the top escalation point for chiller plant, CRAC/CRAH, air handler, pump, and cooling loop failures in a live, always-on facility.
• Run preventive maintenance execution end to end: scheduling, vendor supervision, lockout/tagout, and QA of completed work, with records rigorous enough to survive an audit.
• Lead root-cause analysis for mechanical incidents and drive corrective actions to closure, including procedure updates and spare parts adjustments.
• Build and maintain operating procedures (SOPs, MOPs, EOPs) for mechanical systems and drill them so any operator can execute under failure conditions.
• Drive BMS alarm hygiene and trend analysis so degrading equipment gets fixed before it trips.
• Close out commissioning-to-operations handovers for new mechanical plant, verifying performance against design.

Skills

Mechanical operations

Hyperscale operations

BMS expertise

Root-cause analysis

Shift escalation

On-call readiness

EPA 608 certification (bonus)

Tools

Direct-to-chip cooling

CDUs

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're singularly focused on delivering 10 to 100s of GWs of compute faster than anyone else, rethinking every layer of the stack. We acquire power, design and build data centers, and operate them - with teams spanning hardware and software. Speed and scale are our key differentiators. Come be a part of building civilization-scale infrastructure for AI. We hire people who care deeply about this problem space.

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.

The Data Center Operations Team

The Data Center Operations team keeps Fluidstack's AI data centers running around the clock, operating the mechanical, electrical, and controls systems that keep gigawatt-scale infrastructure online for frontier AI workloads.

Examples Of Key Problems The Team Is Working On

• Operate live chiller plants, CRAC/CRAH units, and direct-to-chip liquid cooling loops at densities where minutes of cooling loss mean thermal shutdown of GPU clusters.
• Build preventive and predictive maintenance programs that scale across new sites without adding downtime or headcount linearly.
• Take mechanical systems from commissioning handover to steady-state operations on compressed schedules, closing punch-list and performance gaps before they become incidents.
• Run root-cause analysis on mechanical failures and feed corrective actions back into design, operating procedures, and spare parts strategy.

Role Scope

• Own mechanical operations on shift as the top escalation point for chiller plant, CRAC/CRAH, air handler, pump, and cooling loop failures in a live, always-on facility.
• Run preventive maintenance execution end to end: scheduling, vendor supervision, lockout/tagout, and QA of completed work, with records rigorous enough to survive a customer or owner audit.
• Lead root-cause analysis for mechanical incidents and drive corrective actions to closure, including procedure updates, setpoint changes, and spare parts adjustments.
• Build and maintain operating procedures (SOPs, MOPs, EOPs) for mechanical systems, and drill them so any operator on shift can execute under failure conditions.
• Drive BMS alarm hygiene and trend analysis so degrading equipment gets caught and fixed before it trips, not after.
• Close out commissioning-to-operations handovers for new mechanical plant, verifying performance against design before accepting systems into the maintenance program.

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.

• 8+ years of hands-on mechanical or critical facilities operations in data centers, with time at a hyperscale operator, colocation provider, or cloud data center operations team.
• Deep operating knowledge of chillers, cooling towers, CRAC/CRAH units, air handlers, pumps, and hydronic loops, including startup, failover, and recovery under load.
• Fluency in BMS platforms: reading trends, tuning alarms, and diagnosing faults from controls data rather than waiting for equipment to fail.
• A track record owning root-cause analysis and preventive maintenance programs at scale, not just executing tickets someone else wrote.
• Experience as the senior mechanical escalation point on shift, making calls during outages when the runbook runs out.
• Willingness to work rotating shifts and carry on-call responsibility for mechanical outages.
• You operate calmly in high-uptime, fast-scaling environments where the plant you ran last quarter is half the size of the one you run now.
• Bonus: experience with direct-to-chip liquid cooling and CDUs, CFC/HCFC refrigerant certification (EPA 608 Universal or equivalent), or a role in commissioning handover for new-build mechanical plant.

We are committed to pay equity and transparency.

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: $202K - $258K