SlipstreamJobs tracks this role from the company's public career site. Apply directly on the employer's site.
Fluidstack is building civilization-scale compute infrastructure for AI, targeting 10+ GW of deployment. The company is rethinking every layer of the stack—acquiring power, designing and building data centers, and operating them with integrated hardware and software teams.
The Thermofluids R&D team is solving unprecedented cooling challenges. With 10 GW of compute planned for 2027 and 30 GW the year after, the team must reject tens of gigawatts of heat at scale. Key problems include designing and building custom compressors and chillers (since merchant suppliers cannot meet the volume and speed requirements), optimizing working fluid and cycle architecture, designing heat exchangers that dominate plant cost, managing two-phase heat transfer at the chip level, and implementing thermal energy storage.
In this role, you will own the control architecture for the machine and test rigs, spanning the compressor, motor drive, expansion turbine, and the thermodynamic loop. You will write safety interlocks and fault handling for a machine whose working fluid can cross its critical point during normal operation—a complex control problem. You will deliver capacity control through motor and turbine speed rather than throttling valves, keeping the process fluid path valve-free at design point. You will validate the control system using hardware-in-the-loop testing before hardware commissioning, prove interlocks function correctly, and carry the controls from the test cell into production chillers, including integration with site building management systems and the wider plant.
Fluidstack operates with full autonomy (own things end-to-end, take on scope without asking), insane urgency (drive everything forward as fast as possible), first-principles reasoning (challenge every assumption, zero analogy thinking), and a focus on building something that matters to the world.
REQUIREMENTS:
- You have written control logic for rotating machinery and were present during first-time operation.
- You have designed interlocks where a fault means destroyed hardware or injury, and can justify every one from first principles.
- You have run hardware-in-the-loop testing that caught real issues before commissioning.
- You have tuned control loops on a live machine and debugged model-plant disagreements.
- You have handed off a control system to others with documentation usable at 3 AM.
- Bonus: Propulsion or vehicle test controls (engine sequencing, abort/safing logic); variable-speed drives and high-speed motor control (VFDs, magnetic bearing controllers); refrigeration and chiller control (superheat, head pressure, capacity staging); industrial control platforms (Beckhoff, Siemens, Allen-Bradley, CODESYS); model-based development and HIL (Simulink, dSPACE, NI VeriStand).
