Data Center Facilities Engineer
Nebius · United States
About Nebius:
Nebius is leading a new era in cloud infrastructure for the global AI economy. We are building a full-stack AI cloud platform that supports developers and enterprises from data and model training through to production deployment, without the cost and complexity of building large in-house AI/ML infrastructure.
Built by engineers, for engineers. From large-scale GPU orchestration to inference optimization, we own the hard problems across compute, storage, networking and applied AI.
Listed on Nasdaq (NBIS) and headquartered in Amsterdam, we have a global footprint with R&D hubs across Europe, the UK, North America and Israel. Our team of 1,500+ includes hundreds of engineers with deep expertise across hardware, software and AI R&D.
The role
We are seeking a Critical Infrastructure Engineer to help ensure the availability, resilience, and operational readiness of the critical systems supporting Nebius data center IT infrastructure.
The primary objective of this role is uptime.
You will provide technical oversight across the electrical and mechanical infrastructure responsible for delivering reliable power and cooling to our GPU and IT environments. Rather than serving primarily as a maintenance technician, you will verify that critical infrastructure is operated safely, consistently, and in accordance with established SLAs, engineering standards, change-control procedures, and operational best practices.
You will also act as an important bridge between IT infrastructure teams and electrical/mechanical specialists. The ideal candidate understands how servers, networking equipment, racks, and GPU systems operate inside a data center while also having enough exposure to critical facilities systems to understand—and challenge when necessary—the infrastructure supporting them.
The position combines technical analysis, provider governance, change management, incident response, and hands-on familiarity with data center IT environments.
You will work onsite in our Minnesota data center location.
Your responsibilities will include:
Critical Infrastructure & Uptime
- Help ensure the availability and operational readiness of the electrical and mechanical infrastructure supporting production data halls and high-density GPU environments.
- Monitor critical infrastructure performance against contractual SLAs, operational requirements, and established reliability standards.
- Develop a strong understanding of the complete power and cooling path supporting IT equipment and identify conditions that could introduce operational risk.
- Review infrastructure capacity, redundancy, and operating conditions to ensure the environment can reliably support current and planned compute deployments.
- Identify infrastructure risks and work with service providers and internal teams to drive corrective actions before they impact production.
- Support infrastructure planning for data center expansions, capacity increases, and new GPU deployments.
Power & Electrical Infrastructure
- Provide technical oversight of data center electrical infrastructure, including generator plants, automatic transfer switches (ATS), UPS systems, battery banks, switchgear, breakers, busbars, bus plugs, PDUs, and related power distribution equipment.
- Understand electrical distribution from facility-level infrastructure through rack-level delivery and IT equipment.
- Participate in technical reviews involving power capacity, electrical distribution, equipment sizing, redundancy, and infrastructure design.
- Work with electrical engineers and infrastructure providers to evaluate proposed changes and ensure appropriate engineering validation is completed before production implementation.
Cooling & Mechanical Infrastructure
- Understand the cooling architecture supporting high-density GPU and IT environments, including water and glycol loops, rear-door heat exchangers (RDHx), evaporative systems, coolant distribution systems, facility water systems, dry coolers, and chillers.
- Evaluate how cooling infrastructure interacts with GPU systems and high-density racks to maintain required operating conditions.
- Partner with mechanical engineers and service providers to review system performance, capacity constraints, and proposed infrastructure changes.
- Identify potential thermal or cooling risks that could affect compute availability or future capacity.
Provider Governance & Change Control
- Provide technical oversight of third-party critical infrastructure and colocation service providers.
- Ensure provider activities comply with Nebius policies, approved procedures, contractual SLAs, and operational requirements.
- Review and approve change requests involving critical infrastructure supporting production environments.
- Challenge incomplete or high-risk work plans and ensure appropriate testing, rollback procedures, risk analysis, and stakeholder communication are in place before work begins.
- Maintain strong governance around maintenance and infrastructure changes that could affect production availability.
- Hold service providers accountable for corrective actions, operational performance, and agreed service levels.
Incident Response & Operational Risk
- Participate in critical infrastructure incidents and coordinate technical response with providers, Data Center IT, networking, and engineering teams.
- Support root-cause analysis following power, cooling, or infrastructure-related incidents.
- Review incident findings and ensure corrective and preventive actions are documented, assigned, and completed.
- Help develop and continuously improve emergency response procedures, escalation paths, change-control standards, and operational documentation.
- Identify recurring infrastructure risks and drive improvements that increase reliability and reduce the likelihood of customer impact.
IT & Critical Infrastructure Integration
- Work closely with Data Center IT teams to understand how critical infrastructure conditions affect servers, networking equipment, GPU clusters, and other production systems.
- Apply practical knowledge of data center IT operations, including racks, servers, fiber, cabling, network equipment, and hardware deployment.
- Support cross-functional troubleshooting where the root cause may span IT equipment and facility infrastructure.
- Help create stronger operational alignment between IT infrastructure and electrical/mechanical teams.
Reporting & Stakeholder Communication
- Translate complex infrastructure conditions, incidents, risks, and provider performance into clear information for technical and business leadership.
- Develop reports, dashboards, presentations, and operational analyses related to uptime, infrastructure performance, capacity, incidents, and service-provider performance.
- Participate in technical and leadership meetings as a subject-matter resource for data center critical infrastructure.
- Use operational data to identify trends, communicate risk, and drive measurable improvements in reliability and provider performance.
We expect you to have:
- Experience working in data center, cloud infrastructure, colocation, critical facilities, or other mission-critical environments.
- Practical understanding of IT infrastructure, including servers, racks, networking equipment, structured cabling, and fiber.
- Working knowledge of data center electrical infrastructure such as UPS systems, generators, switchgear, PDUs, batteries, breakers, and power distribution.
- Exposure to data center mechanical and cooling systems, including chilled-water, glycol, liquid-cooling, or comparable thermal-management environments.
- Ability to understand how electrical and mechanical infrastructure directly impacts IT equipment availability and performance.
- Experience participating in infrastructure change management, incident response, operational risk management, or maintenance governance.
- Ability to review technical plan