Structural Engineer, R&D

Fluidstack; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 210,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Fluidstack is building civilization-scale infrastructure for AI in San Francisco. We seek a structural engineer to own the structural analysis of high-scale machinery, focusing on pressure-containing designs, rotordynamics, and containment under extreme operating conditions.

You will collaborate with the Thermofluids R&D team to push the envelope of heat transfer, energy storage, and machine architecture, delivering safe, scalable hardware designed to withstand demanding, gigawatt-scale

Qualifications

• Experience applying FEA to rotating machinery and validating against test data.
• Proven ability to take a pressure-containing design from calculation to fabricated article.
• Understanding of containment or burst case design and safety arguments.
• Familiarity with rotordynamics and bearing dynamics in turbomachinery.

Responsibilities

• Own the structural analysis of the machine: impeller and rotor stress, casing and containment.
• Design the pressure-containing structures from initial calc to production.
• Collaborate with turbomachinery and aerodynamic teams on critical-speed and modal issues.
• Design the containment case to keep energy contained during faults at speed.
• Create and qualify test cells and fixturing for engine and loop tests.

Skills

FEA Rotating hardware

Pressure vessel design

Rotordynamics

Structural analysis

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.

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 Thermofluids R&D Team

Examples of key problems the team is working on

• Reject 10s of GW of heat, starting now. Fluidstack is targeting 10s of GW of compute over the next two years. Every watt of it becomes heat that has to go somewhere, and no cooling team has ever been asked to open at that scale rather than grow into it.
• Design and build the machines, because nobody can supply them. The merchant compressor market cannot deliver at this rate, and the vendor base behind today’s chillers will not scale to gigawatts. We are taking compressor and chiller design in house, working on machine architectures nobody sells today, and going from blank sheet to production faster than this industry thinks is possible.
• Own every thermofluids problem behind the fleet, not just the chiller. Working fluid and cycle architecture, heat exchangers at a scale that dominates the cost of the plant, two-phase heat transfer at the chip, and thermal energy storage. All of it is open, and whatever this team lands gets built thousands of times.

Role Scope

• Own the structural analysis of the machine: impeller and rotor stress, casing and pressure containment, and the load paths through the packaged unit.
• Design the pressure-containing structures, and carry them from first calculation to hardware people are willing to stand next to.
• Run the rotordynamic and modal work alongside the turbomachinery engineer, covering critical speeds, whirl and the magnetic bearing interface.
• Design the containment case, so an energetic failure at speed stays inside the machine.
• Design the test cell structures and fixturing that carry the article, the drive and the loop under load.

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.

• You’ve taken a pressure-containing design from calculation through to a fabricated article, and it held.
• You’ve run FEA on rotating hardware and correlated it against strain gauge, spin-pit or test data rather than trusting the model.
• You’ve owned a containment or burst case and made the argument for why it holds to people whose safety depended on it.
• You’ve worked the modal and critical-speed problem jointly with whoever designed the aerodynamics, early enough to change both.
• You’ve signed off a structure that got built, and you were there when it was first loaded.
• Bonus: Flight and propulsion structures (spin pit testing, burst margin, containment). Rotordynamics and bearing dynamics. High-cycle fatigue and fracture on rotating hardware. Pressure vessel and containment design. Professional Engineer license.

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.

Compensation Range: $210K - $260K