Applied Researcher – Data Centers

Overview

APPLIED RESEARCHER – DATA CENTERS

Location: Hybrid | Bellevue, WA (downtown)

ABOUT THE OPPORTUNITY

Our client is seeking a Data Center Expert to join an Applied Research organization supporting the next generation of AI infrastructure.

You will be responsible for developing and maintaining a forward-looking technical perspective on AI models and inference technologies.

Your work will influence engineering roadmaps, infrastructure architecture, product direction, technology investments, commercial positioning, and the economics of serving AI workloads.

You will work closely with senior technical and business leaders but will not initially manage an operational team. The role is designed for a technically deep individual who can independently investigate complex questions, form defensible conclusions, and communicate those conclusions clearly enough to influence decisions across the organization.

WHAT YOU'LL DO

• Hold the company's view of where data center infrastructure is going.
• Track vendor and hyperscaler roadmaps, research, standards work, and the startup and venture landscape across power and energy, cooling and thermal, construction and delivery, rack and hall architecture, siting and regulation, and the economics that connect them. Right now that means questions like whether facility-level 800 VDC becomes the standard, how far liquid cooling has to go as racks move from roughly 200 kW toward a megawatt, how much of a build program can be moved into a factory, and whether behind-the-meter generation beats waiting in the interconnect queue. Those specific questions will have changed within a year, holding the current version of them is the job.
• Formulate and validate the product and engineering thesis. Turn that view into a defensible position on what we build, buy, or partner for, pressure-tested against cost, schedule, and what the physical plant can actually support — and say so plainly when the evidence does not hold up.
• Own the technical reference view of a hall at each GPU generation: density, power envelope, cooling topology, and what our operating and prospective sites can and cannot absorb. This includes getting on site to see them.
• Hands-on experience designing, building, or operating data center infrastructure at scale,
• Demonstrated experience with GPU-based compute environments, and
• Working command of the power side of the business, interconnect, capacity procurement, and the constraints that actually govern build timelines
• Fluency with the landscape you would be scanning: who the vendors, hyperscalers, standards bodies, utilities, and startups are in data center power and cooling, and a view on which of them matter. Expect to be asked what you think is currently overhyped, and why.
• Demonstrated ability to do research in the applied sense: taking an open question, investigating it from primary sources — vendor roadmaps, standards documents, utility filings, academic literature, your own benchmarking — and producing a defensible position under genuine uncertainty. A PhD in a relevant technical field is one good route to this and is valued here; sustained industry research, standards-body work, or a body of internal technical assessments that changed real decisions are equally valid. Either way, the role turns on the second half: translating that w

Influence the numbers finance, pricing, and sales depend on: cost per rack, per MW, and per GPU-hour, and how they move with density, cooling approach, and silicon mix. Be able to defend them under challenge.

Make the work land commercially. Support sales and delivery in technically demanding customer and partner conversations, feed product and go-to-market with what we can credibly offer and when, and provide technical diligence on infrastructure partners, colocation providers, vendor reference designs, and prospective tuck-in targets.

WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS