Automation & Controls Engineer, Data Center Facilities

Location: Southaven, MS and Memphis, TN, United States. On-site work in the data center, including mechanical plants, electrical rooms, and data halls.

Company

xAI is building a full Super Intelligence stack spanning Colossus supercomputers, Grok models, and applications including Grok Bot, Grok Build, Grok Imagine, Grok Voice, and X.

What you will do

• Design and manage facility automation projects from control narratives and sequences of operation through panel build, checkout, commissioning, failover testing, and operational handoff.
• Architect, program, debug, document, and maintain PLC and controller code for chillers, pumps, cooling towers, coolant distribution units, air handlers, heat rejection, and related plant equipment.
• Implement lead/lag, staging, rotation, free-cooling, and liquid-cooling strategies that maintain capacity, efficiency, and N+1/2N redundancy as cluster load changes.
• Develop fail-safe interlocks, emergency power-off and transfer logic, alarm strategies, HMI graphics, trends, and operator troubleshooting interfaces.
• Integrate equipment controllers with BMS, EPMS, historian, power metering, and environmental monitoring systems.
• Own live systems after go-live through alarm rationalization, loop tuning, sequence changes, outage support, vendor coordination, and continuous uptime and energy improvements.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, controls, mechatronics, or a related engineering discipline.
• At least 1 year of experience in industrial controls, building or plant automation, data center facilities, or related programming; internships and extracurricular experience count.
• Ability to work on site in mechanical plants, electrical rooms, and data halls, including long hours, nights, and weekends when commissioning, failover testing, or live plant events require it.
• Ability to communicate clearly in writing and verbally through control narratives, sequences of operations, and recommendations across mechanical, electrical, and operations teams.
• Ability to work safely around high voltage, stored energy, refrigerants, fuel systems, and high-pressure hydronics.
• Experience with at least one relevant discipline, including industrial electrical troubleshooting, control-panel and electromechanical-system commissioning, equipment sizing, safety circuits, schematics, industrial networks, PLC programming, or HMI/BMS/SCADA development.
• Working knowledge of NEC, NFPA 70E, UL 508A, and data center facility standards, with the ability to apply them to control design.
• Ability to apply controls to sensors, VFDs, valves, pumps, fans, generators, ATS systems, and other mechanical and electrical assemblies, including disciplined checkout before load operation.

Nice to have

• Experience in data centers, power generation, district energy, industrial utilities, or other 24/7 process plants.
• PLC programming in structured text and ladder using Rockwell Studio 5000, Siemens TIA Portal, or Beckhoff TwinCAT.
• HMI, BMS, and SCADA development with Ignition, Niagara, or an equivalent platform.
• Experience with BACnet/IP, Modbus TCP, EtherNet/IP, Profinet, OPC UA, MQTT, and SNMP.
• Experience reading and producing schematics, panel layouts, riser diagrams, and one-line diagrams; EPLAN is preferred.
• Experience with EPMS, power metering, generator or ATS status, historian systems, and data center alarming tools.

Culture & Benefits

• Fast, iterative design, construction, and commissioning work on a live critical facility.
• Direct ownership of operational systems and continuous improvement of uptime and energy performance.
• Work includes live expansions, commissioning, failover testing, outage support, and construction coordination.
• Working hours may extend to nights and weekends when commissioning, testing, or plant events require it.