Senior Mechanical Design Engineer – Liquid Cooling Systems

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in California.

📋 Description

• Take ownership of the comprehensive mechanical cooling and fluid-distribution architecture for modular data center platforms.

• Define cooling boundaries at the primary, secondary, and rack levels.

• Establish strategies for pumping, flow control, pressure management, balancing, and redundancy.

• Align heat-rejection equipment, distribution piping, CDUs, rack manifolds, rear-door heat exchangers, and other cooling interfaces.

• Create scalable architectures for various product configurations and deployment sizes.

• Conduct and review calculations related to pipe sizing, flow, pressure drop, pump head, and system volume.

• Develop hydraulic models for systems based on water and glycol.

• Validate system performance under normal, part-load, maintenance, startup, and failure conditions.

• Manage P&IDs, mechanical schematics, equipment schedules, valve schedules, instrumentation schedules, and design calculations.

• Create mechanical design criteria, basis-of-design requirements, and standard details.

• Define the boundaries for equipment and scope across plant systems, modules, CDUs, rack cooling, and field interconnections.

• Ensure revision control and technical traceability throughout the mechanical design package.

• Review vendor drawings, submittals, calculations, and equipment selections.

• Define mechanical interfaces between factory-built modules and field-installed infrastructure.

• Develop repeatable piping interconnection strategies, including manifolds, flexible connections, isolation valves, quick disconnects, drains, vents, and leak detection.

• Establish standards for labeling, connection, access, and installation.

• Support designs for transport, rapid installation, and phased expansion.

• Create layouts for repeatable fabrication, assembly, inspection, testing, and installation.

• Standardize piping routes, fittings, valve assemblies, supports, connection points, and mechanical components.

• Coordinate equipment clearances, removal paths, service access, drain points, vent points, and access to filters or strainers.

• Collaborate with manufacturing teams to address buildability challenges and enhance revisions.

• Translate feedback from field and factory into product enhancements.

• Define measurement and control requirements for temperature, flow, pressure, differential pressure, leak detection, fluid level, pump status, and valve position.

• Work alongside controls engineers on operating sequences and alarm strategies.

• Support pump staging, variable-speed control, minimum-flow protection, equipment enablement, and failure-response logic.

• Ensure that mechanical system data facilitates commissioning, operations, and remote monitoring.

• Design systems for filling, flushing, venting, draining, testing, balancing, and startup.

• Specify requirements for isolation, bypass, temporary connections, and load-bank testing.

• Develop or assist in procedures for factory acceptance, site acceptance, and integrated systems testing.

• Establish criteria for performance verification regarding flow, pressure, temperature, heat rejection, controls, alarms, and failure modes.

• Collaborate with commissioning and field teams during startup and troubleshooting.

• Partner with thermal, electrical, controls, structural, manufacturing, commissioning, supply chain, and product teams.

• Coordinate with OEMs, equipment manufacturers, fabricators, and engineering partners.

• Identify interface risks, design gaps, and potential single points of failure.

• Make informed technical decisions and maintain alignment throughout the product architecture.

⛳️ Requirements

• 7 or more years of experience in designing mechanical cooling, hydraulic distribution, process cooling, or mission-critical infrastructure systems.

• Familiarity with data centers, semiconductor facilities, industrial process cooling, central utility plants, or similar high-reliability environments.

• Strong understanding of pipe sizing, pump selection, pressure-drop analysis, flow balancing, system volume, and hydraulic control.

• Experience in developing and managing P&IDs, mechanical calculations, equipment schedules, valve schedules, and instrumentation requirements.

• Practical knowledge of chilled-water, condenser-water, glycol, or process-fluid systems.

• Experience in designing systems for commissioning, maintenance, isolation, flushing, venting, draining, and service access.

• Ability to coordinate efforts across engineering, manufacturing, controls, commissioning, and field teams.

• Strong technical judgment with the capability to manage projects with minimal oversight.

• Experience with direct liquid cooling for AI or HPC systems.

• Familiarity with CDUs, rack manifolds, cold plates, rear-door heat exchangers, liquid-to-liquid heat exchangers, or liquid-to-air systems.

• Background in modular, prefabricated, skid-based, or containerized infrastructure.

• Experience with AFT Fathom, Pipe-Flo, or similar hydraulic modeling tools.

• Knowledge of CFD, thermal modeling, or transient analysis.

• Proficiency in AutoCAD, Revit, Plant 3D, SolidWorks, Inventor, or equivalent design tools.

• Experience in supporting FAT, SAT, IST, or field commissioning activities.

• Professional Engineer license or equivalent technical expertise.

🏝️ Benefits

• Competitive base salary and equity.

• Medical, dental, and vision coverage (subsidized cost).

• Health savings accounts (HSA), flexible spending accounts (FSA), and dependent care FSAs (DCFSA).

• Retirement plan options, including 401(k) and Roth 401(k).

• Unlimited paid time off (PTO).

• 14 paid company holidays each year.

• Subsidized benefits.