Director, Mechanical Engineering – North America, Data Centers

Role overview

Nscale is hiring a Director, Mechanical Engineering (North America, Data Centers) to lead mechanical design ownership and engineering governance across the company’s North America data center portfolio. This is a senior, hands-on leadership role shaping the mechanical basis of design for high-density, liquid-cooled GPU infrastructure.

Responsibilities

• Own the mechanical basis of design for U.S. data centers, including:
  • Cooling plant architectures
  • Heat rejection systems
  • Piping design
  • Water treatment
  • Control system interfaces
• Lead mechanical design reviews across project phases (concept, schematic, detailed) for new builds and expansions.
• Establish and maintain mechanical design standards and reference architectures to enable repeatable, rapid deployment.
• Ensure designs meet availability, maintainability, and efficiency targets for high-density AI workloads.
• Develop liquid cooling readiness standards, including:
  • Direct-to-chip and/or rear-door heat exchanger strategies
  • CDU/HX integration
  • Piping and materials strategy
  • Water quality and treatment
  • Leak detection and containment
  • Commissioning and acceptance criteria
• Provide engineering support during construction for:
  • Long-lead equipment procurement
  • Submittals, RFIs, field changes
  • Issue resolution
• Select and manage architectural/engineering consultants from schematic design through construction documents.
• Enforce quality and documentation standards via drawing and specification reviews.
• Review third-party CFD studies to validate airflow management, temperature compliance, and thermal resilience.
• Partner cross-functionally with Construction, Commissioning, Operations, Procurement, and product/platform stakeholders.
• Implement deployment lessons learned to improve reliability, maintainability, cooling performance, and energy efficiency.
• Build and lead a high-performing engineering team (hiring, mentoring, performance management, career development).
• Support mechanical technical due diligence for greenfield, brownfield, and colocation sites.
• Evaluate existing site/operator documentation (e.g., basis of design, one-lines, P&IDs, sequences of operation, maintenance/incident history, commissioning reports).
• Define and negotiate mechanical lease exhibits and technical schedules (capacity commitments, metering approach, operating envelopes, maintenance windows, response SLAs, change control).

Requirements

• Proven experience owning mechanical design and engineering governance for data center cooling and high-density infrastructure.
• Deep expertise in liquid-cooled systems and the mechanical architecture needed for AI compute.
• Ability to lead design reviews, standards development, consultant management, and quality/documentation enforcement.
• Experience partnering across construction and operations to ensure systems meet technical and business requirements.
• Leadership experience managing and developing engineering talent.

Nice-to-haves

• Familiarity with CFD-based validation for thermal and airflow performance.
• Experience with due diligence for both new builds and existing/colocation environments.