Sr. Staff Engineer, Data Center

LinkedIn is the world's largest professional network, built to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce. Our products help people make powerful connections, discover exciting opportunities, build necessary skills, and gain valuable insights every day. We're committed to providing transformational opportunities for our employees by investing in their growth and aspire to create a culture built on trust, care, inclusion, and fun—where everyone can succeed.

This role is hybrid, performed both from home and from a LinkedIn office on select days, based in Mountain View, CA, Hillsboro, OR, Richardson, TX, Plano, TX, or Manassas, VA.

About the role

The Data Center Engineering (DCE) team designs, builds, commissions, and supports the lifecycle management of the physical facilities and infrastructure that enable critical IT systems, applications, and data. The team leads site and technical evaluations, develops global engineering standards, supports colocation lease requirements, and oversees the design, construction, commissioning, operational readiness, and maintenance of data center infrastructure. Data Center Engineers ensure the safety, stability, reliability, resiliency, security, and efficiency of data center operations to meet stringent availability and performance targets. They also lead root cause analysis (RCA) investigations, drive corrective actions and continuous improvements, and collaborate closely with colocation providers, design consultants, contractors, equipment manufacturers, and internal stakeholders while enforcing applicable safety codes, industry standards, and engineering best practices.

Mechanical and Electrical (M&E) Engineers within the DCE team apply deep electrical and mechanical engineering expertise across power, cooling, controls, and emerging high-density infrastructure technologies, including liquid cooling. They evaluate, design, construct, commission, operate, and maintain resilient and scalable data center facilities while balancing technical performance, energy efficiency, operational risk, maintainability, cost, and long-term capacity requirements.

Responsibilities

• Lead site selection and technical evaluation of data center engineering documents, expansions, and data hall fit-outs, including review of electrical one-line diagrams, mechanical system designs, and infrastructure layouts.
• Partner with data center providers to define, measure, and enforce lease SLAs; assess power and cooling capacity; and ensure compliance with LinkedIn’s redundancy, resiliency, and availability standards.
• Lead technical due diligence and infrastructure negotiations for colocation leases, amendments, and expansions.
• Translate business and capacity requirements into enforceable technical provisions covering capacity delivery, system performance, demarcation of responsibilities, commissioning, maintenance, reporting, emergency response, and service-level remedies.
• Develop and maintain system-level resiliency and redundancy models that define load distribution, failover sequences, and power/cooling interdependencies to ensure infrastructure designs meet LinkedIn’s Tier-level and N+X performance criteria.
• Oversee the design and construction of new data centers, expansions, and retrofits, ensuring that electrical and mechanical systems meet design intent, testing protocols, commissioning standards, and overall project delivery timelines.
• Lead LinkedIn’s liquid-cooling deployment strategy by assessing direct-to-chip cooling technologies, comparing performance tradeoffs and operational impacts, and providing data-driven recommendations to leadership for scalable implementation.
• Create appropriate metrics and tools to support system monitoring and maintenance.
• Perform and review advanced electrical and mechanical calculations and analyses, including load flow, short-circuit, coordination, arc-flash, and CFD modeling, to validate system performance and capacity under normal and failure conditions.
• Lead data center design standardization efforts, including the development, maintenance, and continuous improvement of global Basis of Design (BOD) documentation.
• Define and update owner’s requirements, design drawings, technical specifications, bills of materials, and performance benchmarks to ensure consistency across regions and providers.
• Lead and oversee commissioning and Integrated Systems Testing (IST) of new data center spaces, retrofits, and upgrades, verifying end-to-end system performance against design specifications and operational requirements.
• Evaluate, qualify, and approve new electrical and mechanical systems, equipment, and components, including vendor qualification and product testing, to ensure standardization, performance, and long-term reliability across the global data center fleet.
• Develop and validate operational-readiness requirements, failure-response procedures, escalation paths, and contingency plans for new and existing infrastructure.
• Partner with operations teams and data center providers to ensure personnel, documentation, spare parts, monitoring, and response capabilities are in place before production deployment.
• Develop and manage a comprehensive preventive and corrective maintenance program in collaboration with data center providers, facility operators, and internal operations teams.
• Lead technical investigations and root cause analyses (RCAs) for electrical and mechanical incidents, driving corrective actions, design improvements, and the adoption of global best practices.
• Translate complex engineering analyses, infrastructure risks, and commercial tradeoffs into concise executive-level communications and decision materials.
• Maintain and govern as-built documentation and technical records, ensuring drawings, submittals, test reports, and configuration data are accurate, version-controlled, and accessible to engineering, capacity planning, and operations teams.
• Review and assess maintenance notifications, Methods of Procedure (MOPs), and change events for operational impact, risk classification, and compliance with resiliency standards and maintenance protocols.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with capacity planning, hardware engineering, and network operations teams to forecast infrastructure growth, plan scalable expansion, and optimize power utilization and energy efficiency.
• Provide mentorship and advanced technical training to engineering and operations teams, including troubleshooting electrical and mechanical systems and diagnosing issues such as phase imbalance, protection coordination, thermal irregularities, and direct-to-chip liquid-cooling system failures.

Qualifications

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical, Mechanical, Industrial, Process, or a related engineering discipline.
• 10+ years of experience defining, designing, constructing, commissioning, operating, or maintaining mission-critical infrastructure.
• 7+ years of direct experience leading data center design, construction, field engineering, commissioning, or major infrastructure retrofit programs.
• Experience developing and/or executing large-scale critical infrastructure maintenance, reliability, and operational-readiness programs.
• Experience evaluating electrical and mechanical infrastructure interdependencies, system redundancy, and failure scenarios within mission-critical environments.
• Experience collaborating with colocation providers, engineering consultants, contractors, commissioning agents, equipment manufacturers, and internal operations teams.
• Ability to develop clear, consistent, and actionable technical documentation for use by engineering, operations, capacity planning, and other partner teams.
• Ability to manage and prioritize multiple concurrent mission-critical initiatives and communicate technical risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations effectively across engineering and leadership audiences.
• Professional certifications such as Professional Engineer (PE), Certified Reliability Engineer (CRE), Certified Maintenance & Reliability Professional (CMRP), Chartered Engineer (CEng), or Project Management Professional (PMP).

Preferred Qualifications:

• Master’s or doctoral degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Engineering, Reliability Engineering, or related field AND 4+ years of experience in mission-critical infrastructure, technical project management, or program management.
• 12+ years of direct data center design, construction, and commissioning experience with a hyperscaler, colocation provider, or contractor.
• Experience leading technical due diligence, site evaluations, colocation infrastructure negotiations, or development and enforcement of technical lease requirements and service-level agreements.
• Experience with high-density data center infrastructure and liquid-cooling technologies, including controls, monitoring, and operational-readiness requirements.
• Working knowledge of both electrical and mechanical data center systems, with deep technical expertise in at least one discipline.
• Demonstrated ability to manage, prioritize, and successfully execute multiple concurrent mission-critical projects and drive technical standards, decisions, and consensus across multiple organizational levels.

Skills

• Data Center Site Evaluation, Design & Construction Administration
• Colocation Technical Due Diligence, Lease Requirements, and SLA Management
• Basis of Design (BOD) Development & Standardization
• Electrical Power Distribution Design, Protection, and System Analysis
• Mechanical & Thermal Systems Engineering, including CFD analysis
• High-Density Infrastructure and Direct-to-Chip Liquid Cooling
• Equipment Evaluation, Vendor Qualification, and Technical Procurement
• Data Center Facilities and Lifecycle Management
• Cross-Functional Technical Leadership and Executive Communication

Benefits

LinkedIn strongly believes in the well-being of employees and their families, offering generous health and wellness programs and time away for employees of all levels.

Pay

The pay range for this role is $160,000 to $265,000. Actual compensation packages are based on factors unique to each candidate, including skill set, depth of experience, certifications, and specific work location. The total compensation package may also include annual performance bonus, stock, benefits, and/or other applicable incentive compensation plans.