Principal Mechanical Operations Engineer

Location: Remote in US with 50-70% travel

Employment Type: Full-Time, Direct Hire

Compensation: $225,000 to $270,000

of Openings: 1

Position Summary: Client exists to make humanity more free by accelerating the development of aligned AI. The company is focused on delivering 10s to 100s of gigawatts of compute faster than anyone else while acquiring power, designing and building data centers, and operating them through integrated hardware and software teams. The Data Center Operations team operates infrastructure at national scale, runs sites while they are still being built, and creates the operational playbooks and standards needed to scale the organization by 100x. Role Scope: Serve as the most senior technical authority for operational mechanical and cooling infrastructure across client’s hyperscale AI data-center fleet. Lead site assessments, operational audits, and technical-readiness efforts before site activation. Review designs and specifications from an operational perspective and feed learnings back into design and manufacturing. Serve as the senior technical voice on chillers, cooling towers, CDUs, and liquid-cooling architectures. Own mechanical operational readiness and commissioning-to-operations handoffs for new sites. Author and approve high-risk mechanical MOPs, EOPs, and AOPs. Lead root-cause analysis for significant cooling events through closure. Key Requirements: Career experience operating critical mechanical systems with a strong understanding of thermal precision for AI workloads. Strong command of chilled water systems, chillers, cooling towers, CRAH/CRAC units, pumps, CDUs, and direct liquid cooling in live environments. Experience authoring and executing high-risk mechanical MOPs. Experience leading root-cause analysis for significant cooling events. Ability to assess operational readiness, audit site posture, and raise technical standards. Strong ability to teach and build the mechanical readiness of teams before activation. Preferred experience with hyperscale or large colocation environments operating at hundreds of megawatts. Preferred experience with direct liquid cooling, CDU operations, ASHRAE TC 9.9, chilled-water plant optimization, and Uptime Institute standards.