Field Engineer, Data Center Design and Engineering

About the role

Anthropic's compute runs on a growing global portfolio of data centers built with development partners. As a Senior Field Engineer on the Data Center Design and Engineering team, you will work side by side with developers, general contractors and engineers of record to resolve technical issues on site and speed up construction. You will spend most of your time on active sites, acting as our team's eyes, voice and technical judgment in the field. You will spot problems first, get the right people moving, and stay with each issue until it is closed.

You don't need a data center background. We care more about whether you have delivered complex industrial projects from the field and can get contractors and partners to act when you have no formal authority over them.

What you'll do

Be our engineering presence on site. You will walk installed work against the approved design and build working relationships with developers, general contractors, engineers of record, vendors and commissioning teams. You will hold design acceptance on our team's behalf, deciding whether installed work meets the design. When field conditions and drawings disagree, you will be the first call. You will settle what you can on the spot and bring in the right discipline engineer for the rest. More than 50% of your working time will be at project sites, often with overnight travel across multiple sites. The rest will be remote from your home base.

Get issues closed. You will keep one prioritized list of open engineering issues for your sites, each with an owner and a date. You will follow up in person, challenge dates that don't hold up, and escalate early with a clear recommendation when something is stuck.

Find out why things fail. When equipment, an installation or a test fails, you will gather the evidence, test the first explanation, and trace the failure to its underlying cause. You will confirm that the fix works and check whether other sites carry the same risk.

Clear the path to commissioning and handover. You will check the interfaces between power, cooling, controls and structure before they surface as test failures. You will drive RFIs, deviations and field changes to decisions, so that open engineering questions don't hold up the crews.

Bring the field back into the design. You will turn recurring site problems into changes to our designs, standards and audit checklists. Each project should make the next one easier to deliver.

What this role is not

You won't manage construction crews or direct contractors' means and methods; those stay with our construction delivery partners. You will work with our discipline engineers and hold the field view, rather than produce design documents.

You may be a good fit if you

• Have spent years on active project sites in energy, power, heavy industrial, data center or similar environments, as an engineer, project manager, or construction or commissioning lead

• Can read drawings, single-line diagrams, P&IDs, specifications and schedules well enough to see where they disagree with what's been installed

• Can give specific examples of persuading contractors, vendors or partners who didn't report to you to change course

• Hold your position under pressure, back it with evidence, deliver bad news early, and change your mind when the facts change

• Have led structured failure investigations, using a method such as 5 Whys or 8D, and seen the corrective actions through

• Write short, factual reports that a busy reader can act on

• Treat safety as your own job, and will stop work that isn't safe

• Have a degree in engineering, construction management or a related field, or equivalent practical experience

Strong candidates may also have

• Experience as an owner's representative overseeing an EPC or general contractor

• Commissioning, startup or system turnover experience

• Worked in LNG, refining, offshore, power generation, semiconductor or naval environments

• An electrical, mechanical or civil, structural and architectural (CSA) engineering background

• A PE license, PMP or OSHA 30 certification

• Familiarity with tools such as Procore or Primavera P6