Mechanical Commissioning Project Engineer

Datacenter Design - San Francisco

About the Role

The Mechanical Commissioning Project Engineer owns mechanical commissioning planningance.

Reports to the Commissioning Project Lead and partners closely with mechanical contractors, equipment vendors, design/engineering teams, the electrical commissioning lead, controls stakeholders, and vendor field/test engineers.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and maintain the mechanical commissioning scope, readiness criteria, inspection strategy, and discipline test execution plan.
• Review mechanical design packages, specifications, submittals, method statements, controls narratives, sequence assumptions, and testing requirements for commissionability and risk.
• Coordinate mechanical QA/QC inspections with contractors and vendor field/test engineers, including installation checks, pre-functional readiness, deficiency capture, and closeout tracking.
• Own mechanical commissioning procedure development and review, including equipment startup, functional testing, controls verification, balancing prerequisites, failure mode validation, and integrated systems testing inputs.
• Coordinate with equipment vendors on factory/site acceptance requirements, startup support, test prerequisites, documentation packages, and vendor participation during critical tests.
• Support readiness and execution for cooling, ventilation, hydronic, pumping, heat rejection, controls, and other project-specific mechanical systems.
• Lead discipline-level review of mechanical test results, deficiencies, corrective actions, retest requirements, trend logs, and acceptance evidence.
• Maintain mechanical commissioning dashboards and status inputs for the Commissioning Project Lead, including risk items, resource needs, test readiness, and issue aging.
• Partner with the Electrical Commissioning Lead on cross-discipline dependencies, including power availability, controls integration, emergency modes, heat load scenarios, and integrated testing sequences.
• Support turnover by confirming mechanical documentation, as-built evidence, test records, trend data, and outstanding issue disposition are complete and usable by operations.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of mechanical commissioning, mechanical construction, field engineering, startup, testing, balancing coordination, controls verification, or owner representative experience on complex technical infrastructure projects.
• Strong knowledge of mechanical system startupance testing, controls interfaces, cooling or ventilation systems, hydronic systems, and equipment/vendor startup workflows as applicable to the project scope.
• Experience reviewing commissioning specifications, inspection checklists, functional test scripts, vendor startup procedures, test reports, and trend evidence.
• Ability to coordinate field execution across contractors, equipment vendors, QA/QC teams, commissioning partners, and project leadership.
• Strong practical judgment around readinessance validation, and risk escalation.
• Comfort working in construction environments with evolving schedules and multiple parallel work fronts.
• Clear technical writing skills and discipline in maintaining logs, test evidence, issue records, and decision history.
• Ability to be present at the project site during critical mechanical installation, startup, controls checkout, functional testing, and integrated testing windows.

Preferred Skills

• Owner-side or commissioning agent experience on mission-critical, industrial, manufacturing, data center, or other high-reliability facilities.
• Professional engineering, commissioning, controls, balancing, or equivalent field qualification.
• Experience with integrated systems testing and coordination between mechanical, electrical, controls, and operations teams.
• Familiarity with digital issue trackings, schedule tools, trend tools, and field reporting workflows.
• PE license
• Commissioning certification eg. QCxP, CxA, BCxP, CCP

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employeration, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable lawation technology systems and related data security obligations.

To notify OpenAI that you believe this job posting is non-compliant. No response will be provided to inquiries unrelated to job posting compliance.

We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations to applicants with disabilities.

At OpenAI, we believe artificial intelligence has the potential to help people solve immense global challenges, and we want the upside of AI to be widely shared. Join us in shaping the future of technology.

Compensation

$205.6K – $327K + Offers Equity