About the role
An active rider delivers approximately 80 watts of net electrical output while releasing several hundred watts of metabolic heat. At facility scale, the biological power source becomes the dominant thermal load.
The Staff Thermal Engineer will own heat-rejection, ventilation and humidity strategy across racks, halls and regional facilities.
Every watt consumed by cooling requires additional riders, who create additional heat. You will own the convergence model.
Responsibilities
- Develop thermal models for racks containing 24 independently operating human power units.
- Design ventilation, heat-rejection and humidity-control systems for varying occupancy, cadence and environmental conditions.
- Model the relationship between cooling demand, incremental rider capacity and the additional metabolic heat created by that capacity.
- Establish operating envelopes for temperature, humidity, airflow and rider comfort.
- Lead commissioning, instrumentation and root-cause analysis for regional thermal events.
Minimum qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering or a related field.
- Eight or more years of HVAC, thermal systems, data-center cooling or high-density occupied-facility experience.
- Experience with computational fluid dynamics, psychrometrics and energy-balance modeling.
- Ability to explain recursive thermal constraints to technical and nontechnical stakeholders.
Preferred qualifications
- Advanced degree in mechanical engineering, building science or thermodynamics.
- Experience designing environments for athletes, industrial personnel or other heat-generating infrastructure that can speak.
Benefits
- Medical, dental and vision coverage for eligible employees
- Retirement plan
- Paid time off subject to regional capacity coverage
- Nightly biological maintenance window
- On-site showers and towel service
- Electrolytes during facility shifts
- Nutritionally diverse workplace inputs
- Role-specific personal protective equipment
- Bicycle fitting for employees assigned to production-adjacent work
- No meetings while actively producing above 160 BPM