Lead Engineer, Critical Facility Operations

Overview

Lead Engineer, Critical Facility Operations provides technical leadership and authority for the safe, reliable operation of Cerebras' critical environments across its global footprint, with deep expertise in critical cooling and environmental controls.

What you'll do

• Serve as a technical escalation resource for physical infrastructure operational issues, partnering with site teams, lessors, equipment manufacturers, service providers and internal partners.
• Assess and troubleshoot CDUs and associated cooling systems, including flow, pressure, temperature, water quality, heat exchange, redundancy and facility-to-equipment interfaces.
• Evaluate environmental monitoring and controls, including building management systems, electrical power monitoring, sensors, alarms, interlocks and sequences of operation.
• Support electrical and mechanical incident response, lead technical investigation and root cause analysis, and develop corrective actions with clear verification criteria.
• Review maintenance strategies, operating procedures and proposed changes for technical adequacy, operational risk and effects on redundancy.
• Support commissioning and operational acceptance of new sites through review of test evidence, maintainability, controls performance, documentation and unresolved deficiencies.
• Translate product requirements into operating limits and influence product improvements.
• Work with CFOps program management on program development and maturity, providing technical expertise and validation (engineering approval).
• Perform operational engineering assessments of prospective sites and provider proposals, identifying limitations in redundancy, maintainability, controls, recovery capability and contractual operating commitments.
• Support development and maintenance of operational and engineering standards, approved operating limits and equipment-interface requirements, including electrical distribution, liquid cooling, and controls.
• Partner with Product Engineering, EPC, Build & Deploy and equipment manufacturers to validate facility-to-product interfaces, investigate coupled failure modes, and translate operating experience into product and facility improvements.
• Develop risk-based maintenance requirements and facility-spares recommendations; assess provider maintenance scopes and completed-work evidence for technical adequacy.
• Define and witness functional, failover and recovery testing, verifying that control sequences, alarms and redundancy behave as intended under normal and degraded conditions.
• Establish technical baselines and maintain accurate operating documentation, including system dependencies, approved settings, procedures and engineering deviations; assess fleet exposure to recurring defects and equipment obsolescence.
• Provide technical review and approval within delegated authority, escalate unacceptable risks, and require work to stop when conditions are unsafe or outside approved operating limits.

What you'll need

• 10+ years of relevant data center experience, with substantial responsibility for live, mission-critical environments.
• Deep expertise in environmental controls, including hands-on experience with Coolant Distribution Units (CDUs) and data center cooling systems.
• Strong practical understanding of data center electrical and mechanical infrastructure and how these systems interact.
• Ability to assess interconnected systems, recognize technical limitations, and engage qualified specialists when needed.
• Working knowledge of data center white space, including servers, storage, networking equipment, racks, and associated data hall infrastructure.
• Proven experience leading technical incident response, root cause analysis (RCA), commissioning, or operational acceptance activities.
• Engineering degree, relevant technical qualification, or equivalent practical experience.

Details

• Fully remote, with up to 50% travel required.
• Heavy travel to sites expected in the first year; long-term travel expectations are negotiable.
• Reports to the Director of Critical Facility Operations.