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.
WHAT YOU’LL DO
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.
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.
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.
WHAT YOU BRING
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.
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.
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.
Education requirements: We require at least a Bachelor's degree in a related field or equivalent experience.
Location-based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.
Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.
We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.
Your safety matters to us. To protect yourself from potential scams, remember that Anthropic recruiters only contact you from @anthropic.com email addresses. In some cases, we may partner with vetted recruiting agencies who will identify themselves as working on behalf of Anthropic. Be cautious of emails from other domains. Legitimate Anthropic recruiters will never ask for money, fees, or banking information before your first day. If you're ever unsure about a communication, don't click any links—visit anthropic.com/careers directly for confirmed position openings.
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.
Anthropic is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco. We offer competitive compensation and benefits, optional equity donation matching, generous vacation and parental leave, flexible working hours, and a lovely office space in which to collaborate with colleagues. Guidance on Candidates' AI Usage: Learn about our policy for using AI in our application process