Mechanical Engineer – Customer Focused Team

Job Description Form - Mechanical Engineer (USA - San Francisco)
Position: Mechanical Engineer – Customer Focused Team

Department: Engineering

Position Summary

The Mechanical Engineer - Customer Focused Team works closely with key customers to design new and innovative Coolant Distribution Units (CDUs). The position involves working closely with a key customer and a small advance team of driven and highly capable professionals to fully understand the customer’s needs, use case, and other product requirements, coming to a common understanding and agreement on project scope, requirements, and setting initial design direction. After initial agreement, the customer focused team Mechanical Engineer remains a core team member throughout the full CDU design and new product introduction (NPI) lifecycle.

In addition to maintaining a close relationship with the key customer, you will make major and ongoing contributions to the CDU mechanical design, collaborate with various internal and external teams and partners, and ensure the customer interested are kept front and center during the product design. This role requires strong interpersonal and communication skills, and excellent mechanical engineering, thermodynamics, and fluid mechanics skills.  

Essential Duties & Responsibilities

Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Develop and maintain excellent working relationships with the key customer.
• Lead the early-stage NPI design of Coolant Distribution Units (CDUs) as part of a customer-focused team during concept development, supporting a common understanding of product specifications, requirements, and design approach.
• Take a major role in initial product design using principles of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and mechanical engineering to deliver accurate performance models that support fast decision cycles for product architecture and direction.
• Support rapid iteration of design concepts through technology assessment, feasibility analysis, and proofs of concept, oversee the building and testing of thermal, hydraulic, and integrated assembly prototypes for validation.
• Create detailed engineering drawings, reports, design reviews, and other documentation to clearly explain convey design ideas, test results, and recommendations to internal teams and external stakeholders.
• Work closely with core teams, customers, and industry partners to ensure our CDU designs are delivered on time, meeting and exceeding market needs.
• Review and approve designs, drawings, and other engineering documentation.
• Innovate and advance the state of the art for CDU component and system design, building and maintaining Cool IT’s competitive advantage.
• Collaborate with industry groups to define and influence emerging standards and best practices.
• Continuously look for ways to make our CDU designs better performing, improve reliability, reduce costs, and increase efficiency.

Knowledge, Skills & Abilities

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Engineering Physics, or a directly related discipline.
• Minimum of 7 years relevant engineering and/or design experience.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Professional engineering designation or eligibility to obtain it in California within 12 months.
• Experience in the datacenter, high-performance computing, or liquid cooling industries.
• Experience in customer-facing roles such as technical sales, key account management, consulting, or other engineering roles with frequent interactions with customers.
• Experience in product design, technical sales, or engineering of thermal management and heat transfer solutions, fluid dynamics, datacenter, or HVAC products.

Knowledge:

• Thermodynamics: fundamentals of heat transfer in liquid to liquid and liquid to air systems
• Fluid mechanics: proven understanding of hydraulic and gas fluid behaviours, particularly as they relate to heat transfer in liquid-cooling systems. Able to build first-order fluid network models from component performance curves and generate predicted system-level pressure-flow curves.
• Datacenter design: knowledge of the basics of datacenter design, relevant standards, and best practices for facility design and/or operation.
• Process piping, P&ID and building mechanical design, particularly with respect to HVAC and fluid transfer.
• Understanding of pump, motor, heat exchanger, and sensor selection, testing, and validation.
• Experience with rapid prototyping manufacturing techniques and testing of thermal/mechanical components or assemblies; familiarity with lab equipment for data collection (Preferred)
• Familiarity with NPI product design, PLM, and PDM processes and how they contribute to engineering change management (Preferred).

Skills:

• Excellent verbal, written, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Excellent time management and organizational skills.
• Strong analysis, problem-solving, and risk mitigation skills.
• Thermo-mechanical design calculations; heat transfer, fluid mechanics, piping design, and HVAC.
• Proficiency in using CAD software (e.g., SolidWorks) for detailed mechanical designs & drawings.
• Proficiency with finite element computer simulations: CFD, heat transfer, stress/strain (Preferred), and seismic analysis (Preferred).
• Design for Lean Six Sigma or related statistical product design methodologies (Preferred).
• Technical product and design review: competitive benchmarking, performance, estimated cost, Design for Manufacturability, Design for Assembly, and Design for Service.
• Engineering Change Management for NPI and Sustaining products.
• Strong sense of urgency and responsiveness, driving projects to closure.
• Mentoring and guidance of junior team members.

Abilities:

• Excellent ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams, customers, and external partners.
• Ability to fully understand customer needs & requirements and decompose them into functional engineering requirements to guide product design.
• Technical leadership in the design and development of complex projects with cross-functional teams.
• Perform engineering design calculations and FEA simulation for fluid mechanical, thermal, and/or seismic analyses.
• Able to travel domestically and internationally to: Cool It HQ (Calgary, Alberta), customer sites, and industry conferences and trade shows.

This position will be located out of the San Francisco Bay area and may require frequent trips to key customer facilities in the area. The salary range for this role is $94,400 to $141,600 dependent on the experience and skills of the successful applicant.

Special Conditions of Employment

Up to 30% travel may be required, both domestically (USA) and internationally.

Benefits 

Ecolab provides the following benefits: medical, dental, vision, life insurance, accident insurance, critical illness insurance, hospital indemnity insurance, auto insurance, home insurance, pet insurance, identity theft protection, short-term and long-term disability, 401k, pension plans, retirement health care benefits, short-term incentives, vacation (12 days), holidays, parental leave, employee stock purchase plans (Full-Time Associates), discount on day care services and caregiver services, adoption assistance, group legal services, employee assistance program, employee discount program, and education assistance program, on-Site childcare and fitness facilities may be available at select Ecolab locations. Click here for additional benefits information. If you are viewing this posting on a site other than our Ecolab Career website, view our benefits at jobs.ecolab.com/working-here.

Potential Customer Requirements Notice

To meet customer requirements and comply with local or state regulations, applicants for certain customer-facing roles may need to:

- Undergo additional background screens and/or drug/alcohol testing for customer credentialing.

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) 

Ecolab will provide reasonable accommodation (such as a qualified sign language interpreter or other personal assistance) with our application process upon request as required to comply with applicable laws. If you have a disability and require accommodation assistance in this application process, please visit the Recruiting Support link in the footer of each page of our career website.