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Data Center Engineering & DesignAustin, TXFull Time

Structural Engineer, R&D

Austin, TX · New York, NY · San Francisco, CA · Los Angeles; CA · Seattle, WAHybrid

About Fluidstack

Technology is the most important tool humans have found for improving the human condition, but it is not a default good. It is a lever for ideology.

Today the most powerful technology in history is being built: machines that solve problems better than humans can. The most important mission of our generation is to imbue AI with democratic values: error-correcting institutions, freedom of speech, individual liberties. AI trains and runs on massive compute clusters. Whichever ideology builds the infrastructure the fastest is the ideology that will endure. Democracy is delicate and won't survive this technology by default.

We hire people who care deeply about this problem space. If that is you, please apply!

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 more than 10 gigawatts of heat, starting now. Fluidstack is targeting 10 GW of compute in 2027 and 30 GW the year after. Every watt of it becomes heat that has to go somewhere, and no cooling team has ever been asked to open at that number 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.

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 careers@fluidstack.io 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

$210K – $260K • Offers Equity

Ready to help build civilization-scale infrastructure for AI?

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