Microgrid Architect Lead, Power Generation

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 Power Generation Team

Examples of key problems the team is working on

- Build an islanded grid at gigawatt scale, from a blank sheet. Generation, storage and compute running with no utility behind them, where the machine you design is the only thing holding frequency. No playbook exists at this size, so the architecture you set becomes the reference.
- Get power online in months, not years. Interconnection queues are measured in years and we do not have them. Generating our own power is how a site goes from signed lease to live compute inside six months, and the power system is the long pole in that plan.
- Make one power block, then build it a thousand times. A repeatable block and cluster unit, validated once and stamped across the fleet, is the only route to the scale we are targeting. Every bespoke site is schedule we do not get back.
- Design a grid whose largest load answers back. Compute is not passive demand here. Load behaviour, curtailment and shedding are design variables you negotiate and specify, a lever almost no power system engineer has ever been handed.

Role Scope

- Own the system design basis for the islanded grid, fixing voltage levels, topology, grounding, redundancy boundaries and the repeatable block and cluster unit, with v1 and the site and block single-lines issued inside six months.
- Treat the block as a product rather than a project, holding one standard design across sites, driving out the variation that turns a repeatable build back into bespoke engineering, and freezing the design early enough that procurement and construction are never absorbing late change.
- Write the internal grid code that every generator, BESS, inverter, transformer and ITR must meet, own the conformance evidence that proves compliance before equipment ships rather than after it lands, and own the technical content of generation and electrical equipment specifications and the technical evaluation of bids, with v0.1 in vendors' hands before the first major RFP.
- Build the model of record yourself and own the study register, producing the first-pass generation, BESS and reserve sizing and the first load flow, short circuit and transient stability results, then accepting or rejecting every vendor and EPC study against it.
- Set the stability and protection philosophy, covering the loss-of-largest-unit contingency, reserve policy and a load shedding scheme with compute as a participating resource, and negotiate the load behaviour specification with the compute side that everything downstream depends on.
- Own the phasing rule, so whether the next block can be energised safely is your call at every intermediate build state, and set the prioritised study roadmap that says which studies must be in hand before long-lead procurement commits.
- Close the loop from the field back into the standard, going to site to see how the design is actually built and operated, and folding every commissioning finding and every installer workaround into the next revision so block fifty goes in faster and cleaner than block one.
- Hire the specialists behind you in sequence: a protection and HV substation engineer, a studies and EMT engineer to take modelling off your desk, and the operations counterpart who will own dispatch, reserves and switching orders long before commissioning.
 
## 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 have delivered a real islanded or very weak-grid power system at 100MW or more, on an island or remote utility, a mining or LNG captive plant, an OEM power systems group, or a specialist islanded-systems practice. A grid-tied microgrid is not the same problem.
- You build the models with your own hands, deep EMT work in PSCAD or equivalent alongside RMS, and you have personally produced the load flow, short circuit and stability results that decisions were made on.
- You have designed around grid-forming inverter control and inverter-dominated protection, where there is little or no synchronous machine underneath you to hide behind.
- You have personally owned a system design basis that vendors were held to, and you have rejected a vendor or EPC study that did not meet it.
- You have been in the room when an island went dark, and you were the one who had to explain why.
- You set standards that OEMs and EPCs actually comply with, GE, Caterpillar, Tesla and their equivalents, on technical authority rather than headcount or a title.
- You have designed something that got built many times over, and you hold the discipline that comes with it: you freeze a design, you say no to the change that would have been a small improvement and a large disruption, and you have watched what a late revision does to a supply chain.
- You spend time where the work happens, and the standards you write are shaped by what you saw installers and operators actually do rather than by what the drawing assumed they would.
- Bonus: ERCOT market and interconnection dynamics. GW-scale HV substation design (230kV and above). Professional Engineer licence. Toyota Production System or lean practice applied to design and build (standard work, built-in quality, design freeze discipline). Load shedding and dispatch schemes that treat flexible load as a participating resource. Utility control room and switching order design.

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 [email protected] 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.

Compensation

$263K – $330K