Lead Engineer, Critical Facility Operations

About the role

Cerebras Systems builds the world's largest AI chip, 56 times larger than GPUs. This architecture allows Cerebras to deliver industry-leading training and inference speeds; over 10 times faster than GPU-based hyperscale cloud inference services.

This order of magnitude increase in speed is transforming the user experience of AI applications, unlocking real-time iteration and increasing intelligence via additional agentic computation.

Cerebras works with the leading model labs, global enterprises, and cutting-edge AI-native startups. OpenAI recently announced a multi-year partnership with Cerebras, to deploy 750 megawatts of scale, transforming key workloads with ultra high-speed inference.

The Role

Reporting to the Director of Critical Facility Operations, the Lead Engineer, Critical Facility Operations provides technical leadership and authority for the safe, reliable operation of Cerebras’ critical environments across our global footprint.

This role combines extensive data center operating and engineering experience with deep expertise in critical cooling and environmental controls, including coolant distribution units (CDUs), and strong experience with data center mechanical and electrical infrastructure.

This role will immediately support operational sites and coming builds, lead complex troubleshooting and turn their experience into program development and improvements in operations, availability and liaison with our product teams for end-to-end resilience and reliability.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a technical escalation resource for physical infrastructure operational issues, partnering with site teams, lessors, equipment manufacturers and service providers, as well as 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 in partnership 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 growing 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 appropriate 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 during delivery and/or operations.

How the Role Will Grow

As our portfolio expands, this role will evolve and help grow the regional engineering operations program, team and scope, and has the opportunity to grow as an individual contributor or in a leadership position: setting technical operating practices, mentoring engineers and site teams, leading reliability improvement across sites, and contributing to global standards and future facility requirements. This role will involve heavy travel to sites in the first year of the role. Travel expectations, especially long-term are negotiable.

Team Environment and Culture

Cerebras is scaling at a tremendous pace and requires a team player who can handle a balance between driving maturity for the future and handling near-term ambiguity with a bias toward getting things done for the good of the team, with the goal of building and maturing the program over time into a resilient, effective and efficient operations organization. The ideal candidate will strike a balance between contributing, making sound decisions when needed, and providing data, information and clarity for others to make sound decisions, and be able to navigate between the three.

Qualifications

• 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.

LOCATION: Fully remote, with up to 50% travel required.