Data Center Mechanical Engineer
San Francisco, CA | New York City, NYFull-TimeMid-levelSoftware Engineering
About Anthropic
- Anthropic’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.
ABOUT THE ROLE
- Anthropic is seeking a Senior Data Center Mechanical Engineer to lead the design direction and technical oversight of building mechanical systems including cooling, plumbing, and fire protection across our data center portfolio. This is a senior individual contributor role focused on driving and reviewing mechanical design and products from concepts to detailed design and construction documentation produced by external engineering firms and development partners, ensuring every facility meets Anthropic’s standards for reliability, efficiency, and scalability.
- You will own the mechanical design direction from Basis of Design through construction and commissioning, serving as the primary technical interface between Anthropic’s internal teams and our external engineering and development partners.
Design Direction & Review
- Drive mechanical design concepts for data center cooling plants, chilled-water distribution, plumbing, and fire protection systems.
- Review and direct design drawings, specifications, and construction documentation produced by external engineering firms, ensuring alignment with Anthropic’s Basis of Design and owner requirements.
- Evaluate design submittals, shop drawings, and equipment selections; respond to RFIs with clear technical direction.
- Identify design conflicts and drive resolution across mechanical, electrical, and controls disciplines.
- Maintain and evolve Anthropic’s internal mechanical design standards and reference configurations.
- Drive mechanical design concepts for data center cooling plants, chilled-water distribution, plumbing, and fire protection systems.
- Review and direct design drawings, specifications, and construction documentation produced by external engineering firms, ensuring alignment with Anthropic’s Basis of Design and owner requirements.
- Evaluate design submittals, shop drawings, and equipment selections; respond to RFIs with clear technical direction.
- Identify design conflicts and drive resolution across mechanical, electrical, and controls disciplines.
- Maintain and evolve Anthropic’s internal mechanical design standards and reference configurations.
External Partner Coordination
- Serve as the primary mechanical engineering point of contact for external developers, design engineers, and construction partners.
- Develop scopes of work, equipment specifications, and bid packages for mechanical infrastructure.
- Perform technical due diligence on third-party and colocation facilities, evaluating mechanical designs against program requirements and redundancy targets.
- Coordinate with equipment vendors and manufacturers on cooling system procurement, including chillers, CDUs, and piping assemblies.
- Serve as the primary mechanical engineering point of contact for external developers, design engineers, and construction partners.
- Develop scopes of work, equipment specifications, and bid packages for mechanical infrastructure.
- Perform technical due diligence on third-party and colocation facilities, evaluating mechanical designs against program requirements and redundancy targets.
- Coordinate with equipment vendors and manufacturers on cooling system procurement, including chillers, CDUs, and piping assemblies.
Construction & Commissioning
- Monitor mechanical system installation for compliance with design intent and industry standards.
- Conduct site visits to review progress, resolve field issues, and validate construction quality.
- Support testing and commissioning of mechanical systems; analyze data and troubleshoot issues.
- Monitor mechanical system installation for compliance with design intent and industry standards.
- Conduct site visits to review progress, resolve field issues, and validate construction quality.
- Support testing and commissioning of mechanical systems; analyze data and troubleshoot issues.
Required
- Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from an ABET-accredited program.
- 7+ years of experience designing building mechanical systems for data centers or mission-critical facilities.
- Strong knowledge of chilled-water systems, air-cooled cooling plants, liquid cooling, and redundant piping configurations.
- Experience driving and reviewing mechanical design work produced by external engineering consultants.
- Proficiency in reading and marking up construction drawings, P&IDs, and single-line diagrams.
- Working knowledge of applicable codes and standards (ASHRAE, NFPA, IMC, IPC).
- Strong communication skills with the ability to drive technical decisions across internal teams and external partners.
- Ability to travel up to 30% domestically to data center sites.
- Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from an ABET-accredited program.
- 7+ years of experience designing building mechanical systems for data centers or mission-critical facilities.
- Strong knowledge of chilled-water systems, air-cooled cooling plants, liquid cooling, and redundant piping configurations.
- Experience driving and reviewing mechanical design work produced by external engineering consultants.
- Proficiency in reading and marking up construction drawings, P&IDs, and single-line diagrams.
- Working knowledge of applicable codes and standards (ASHRAE, NFPA, IMC, IPC).
- Strong communication skills with the ability to drive technical decisions across internal teams and external partners.
- Ability to travel up to 30% domestically to data center sites.
Preferred
- 15+ years of experience designing building mechanical systems for data centers or mission-critical facilities.
- Professional Engineer (PE) license.
- Experience with thermal-hydraulic modeling software (AFT Fathom, Cadence 6SigmaET, ANSYS, or similar).
- Experience with CFD modeling and energy analysis.
- Familiarity with controls/BAS systems and sequences of operation for cooling plants.
- Experience preparing SOWs, facility audits, and TCO analyses.
- Proficiency with Revit MEP or AutoCAD MEP.
- 15+ years of experience designing building mechanical systems for data centers or mission-critical facilities.
- Professional Engineer (PE) license.
- Experience with thermal-hydraulic modeling software (AFT Fathom, Cadence 6SigmaET, ANSYS, or similar).
- Experience with CFD modeling and energy analysis.
- Familiarity with controls/BAS systems and sequences of operation for cooling plants.
- Experience preparing SOWs, facility audits, and TCO analyses.
- Proficiency with Revit MEP or AutoCAD MEP.
- The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.
- For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.
How we're different
- We believe that the highest-impact AI research will be big science. At Anthropic we work as a single cohesive team on just a few large-scale research efforts. And we value impact — advancing our long-term goals of steerable, trustworthy AI — rather than work on smaller and more specific puzzles. We view AI research as an empirical science, which has as much in common with physics and biology as with traditional efforts in computer science. We're an extremely collaborative group, and we host frequent research discussions to ensure that we are pursuing the highest-impact work at any given time. As such, we greatly value communication skills.
- The easiest way to understand our research directions is to read our recent research. This research continues many of the directions our team worked on prior to Anthropic, including: GPT-3, Circuit-Based Interpretability, Multimodal Neurons, Scaling Laws, AI & Compute, Concrete Problems in AI Safety, and Learning from Human Preferences.
