Fluidstack

Qualification Engineer, Fluidstack Labs at Fluidstack (Austin, TX)

Fluidstack· Austin, TX·

Role details

Work type
Onsite
Employment
Full-Time

Fluidstack at a glance

Builds and operates gigawatt-scale AI data centers and fully managed GPU clusters for frontier AI labs, governments, and enterprises.

Fluidstack acquires power, designs and builds data centers, and operates them, and it delivers fully managed multi-thousand-GPU clusters to AI companies. It pitches gigawatts of compute in roughly six months versus an industry norm of 18 to 24, and is the builder behind Anthropic's $50B US data center buildout.

· latest: In talks for $1B at ~$18B valuation (April 2026, reported) · backed by Cacti, Jane Street, Situational Awareness, Patrick and John Collison

Job description

About Fluidstack

We exist to make humanity more free. For most of human history, you farmed or you starved. Technology gave people more time for the things they wanted to do, instead of things they had to do. Powerful AI will be the biggest lever for human choice we've ever built - but only if models are aligned with what humanity actually wants. There are groups building AI who don't share these goals. Whoever deploys frontier compute infrastructure fastest will decide whether AI expands human freedom or shrinks it.

We're singularly focused on delivering 10 to 100s of GWs of compute faster than anyone else, rethinking every layer of the stack. We acquire power, design and build data centers, and operate them - with teams spanning hardware and software. Speed and scale are our key differentiators. Come be a part of building civilization-scale infrastructure for AI.

We hire people who care deeply about this problem space. If that is you, please apply!

How We Operate

  • Be a barrel. Full autonomy. Own things end to end, take on scope without being asked, no permission required to operate outside your core role.
  • Insane urgency. We drive everything forward as fast as possible.
  • Reason from first principles. Challenge every assumption. Zero analogy thinking, no egos, the best idea wins.
  • Love of the game. The frontier of AI is the most interesting problem of our time. We put in long hours at high intensity to push the frontier forward.
  • Build something that actually matters. If you're going to spend your time, spend it on something that matters to the world.

The Fluidstack Labs Team Examples of key problems the team is working on

  • Qualify the hardware the frontier runs on before it runs anywhere else. First samples of next-generation accelerators, switches, storage, and liquid cooling land here, and leave as production-ready platforms with runbooks the whole fleet inherits.
  • Compress silicon-to-production to weeks. The lab closes the gap between vendor sample and customer-ready gigawatt infrastructure, and every week cut here pulls the entire 10s-of-GW deployment curve forward.
  • Run the lab like a production site. Provisioning, telemetry, demand management, and liquid cooling mirror production architecture exactly, so a qualification pass in the lab is a deployment guarantee in the field.
  • Prove the power envelope nobody else will touch. Dynamic demand management lets AI compute deploy beyond nominal electrical capacity, and the lab validates the full detection-to-shutdown response chain that makes it safe.

Role Scope

  • Bring up first-sample accelerator platforms (NVIDIA, AMD, custom accelerators) end to end: rack integration, liquid cooling commissioning, firmware baseline establishment, network connectivity, and software stack validation at rack densities up to and beyond 120 kW.
  • Validate network platforms across Broadcom Tomahawk, Broadcom Jericho, and NVIDIA Spectrum silicon, driving Keysight Ixia traffic generation for RFC 2544/2889 benchmarking, line-rate stress, and protocol correctness.
  • Verify the optical layer with EXFO test equipment, covering BER characterization and power budget analysis across the link inventory a qualification depends on.
  • Qualify CDUs and liquid cooling across nVent, CoolIT, and Vertiv platforms: commissioning procedures, BMS telemetry integration, leak detection validation, coolant chemistry verification, and the operational runbooks that fall out of each pass.
  • Exercise the full power oversubscription response chain: graceful and forced shutdown paths, power-cap and p-state levers via BMC, ATS transfer scenarios, breaker-trip detection, rPDU commissioning with outlet-level telemetry, and repeatable power-virus stress harnesses against accelerator hardware.
  • Co-develop qualification matrices with hardware partners, evaluate converged local-NVMe storage platforms (Weka, Hammerspace, VAST Data), and turn results into runbooks production teams inherit.

What We're Looking For

The below is a starting point. We always make space for exceptional people, so if you don't fit this role exactly, tell us where you would.

  • You've personally brought up servers, accelerators, or switches from first power-on: racking, cabling, firmware, first boot, and everything that goes wrong in between.
  • You script your test harnesses and automation rather than clicking through runs, so your results are repeatable and your throughput compounds.
  • You're deep in Linux and manage hardware at the BMC level: IPMI, Redfish, sensor telemetry, and power and boot control from the command line.
  • You document methodically, producing test reports and runbooks that someone else can execute without you in the room.
  • You've worked hands-on with liquid-cooled, high-power hardware and treat its safety procedures as part of the craft.
  • You debug across hardware, firmware, and software layers yourself, without waiting for someone else to isolate the fault.
  • Bonus: RDMA/RoCEv2 fabrics. Optics testing depth. Kubernetes-based provisioning stacks. Power and electrical instrumentation experience.

We are committed to pay equity and transparency. Fluidstack is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and protected veterans’ status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Fluidstack will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records pursuant to applicable law.

You will receive a confirmation email once your application has successfully been accepted. If there is an error with your submission and you did not receive a confirmation email, please email careers@fluidstack.io with your resume/CV, the role you've applied for, and the date you submitted your application-- someone from our recruiting team will be in touch.

Why work at Fluidstack

  • Mission-Driven Work: Directly building the physical infrastructure for the next generation of AI — a rare opportunity to work on frontier technology with tangible, large-scale impact.
  • Rapid Growth Trajectory: 516.7% headcount growth YoY with 270 open positions signals massive opportunity for career acceleration and ownership.
  • Technical Depth: Work spans hardware (electrical, civil, mechanical engineering for data centers) and software (GPU cluster orchestration, monitoring, infrastructure platform engineering), offering diverse technical challenges.
  • Top-Tier Talent Pool: Employees come from AWS, Tesla, Crusoe, Palantir, Oracle, and Meta, indicating a high-caliber, ambitious work environment.
  • Work Policy: Remote-friendly for many roles, with hubs in San Francisco, New York, Austin, Seattle, and Buffalo. Departments span Engineering, Operations, Data Center, Security, and more.
  • Culture: Emphasis on speed, autonomy, and removing friction — "We build technology to enable delivery of gigawatts of compute in 6 months" — reflecting a bias for action and operational excellence.

Application questions