Data Center Plant Engineer, Controls

About the job

As a Plant Engineer at Google specializing in Controls and Automation, you will be a key site technical leader ensuring the reliability, efficiency, and continuous improvement of our critical data center infrastructure . You will bridge the gap between day-to-day operations and high-level systems engineering, taking ownership of the site’s Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), Distributed Control Systems (DCS), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) platforms, and Building Management Systems (BMS). As a Plant engineer, you will form the technical backbone of the data center operations team, leveraging subject matter expertise to work daily with senior facility technicians and facility management in the continued operation of the site.

In this role, you will apply engineering theory to optimize critical cooling and power sequences, manage operational risks, and drive key sustainability metrics like Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE). As an advocate for best practices, you develop creative approaches to reducing operational costs while improving overall data center efficiency. You ensure that environmental and safety standards are consistently met, identifying problems and making repairs quickly. In emergency situations or abnormal conditions, you manage data center performance issues and outages to minimize the recovery time from failures.Behind everything our users see online is the architecture built by the Technical Infrastructure team to keep it running. From developing and maintaining our data centers to building the next-generation of Google platforms, we make Google's product portfolio possible. We're proud to be our engineers' engineers and love voiding warranties by taking things apart so we can rebuild them. We keep our networks up and running, ensuring our users have the best and fastest experience possible.Individual pay is determined by factors including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

US: $122000 - $173000 (USD) + 15% bonus target + equity + benefits

Learn more about benefits at Google.

Responsibilities

• Provide effective leadership for successful critical system troubleshooting, unit commissioning, and repairs/replacements with minimal supervision in quality, quantity, and timeliness as assigned.
• Serve as the site’s subject matter expert (SME) on controls systems, such as SCADA interfaces, control loops, automation, instrumentation, etc.
• Analyze telemetry data to optimize mechanical cooling and electrical power efficiency, while collaborating with design engineers to bring a practical operational mindset to new infrastructure.
• Partner with global engineering teams to resolve complex technical challenges and implement infrastructure changes, while reviewing and approving highly technical Methods of Procedure (MOPs) and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
• Respond to critical data center events and alarms and be responsible for being a point of escalation on operational issues. Provide critical engineering support for Root Cause Analysis (RCA) investigations.

Qualifications

Minimum qualifications:

• Associate's degree in Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering or equivalent degree program, or equivalent practical experience.
• 7 years of experience in Controls/Automation in an industrial or commercial environment.
• Experience with Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA), Electrical Power Monitoring Systems (EPMS), or Building Management Systems (BMS), including monitoring, alarming configuration, troubleshooting, and graphical user interface/Human-Machine Interface (HMI) operation.
• Experience diagnosing software/hardware errors and managing Linux operating systems within an industrial control environment.
• Experience troubleshooting, programming, or designing Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) or Distributed Control System (DCS) architectures (e.g., Allen-Bradley, Siemens, Schneider Electric).

Preferred qualifications:

• 10 years of experience working in data centers, manufacturing, power plants, or transmission operations.
• Direct experience with protective relay configuration, coordination, and testing for medium-to-high voltage power distribution systems including industrial network design (VLANs, routing, switching, and subnets) for automation
• Experience overseeing security patching, firmware updates, access control/identity management, and vulnerability remediation for both hardware devices and host operating systems.
• Experience configuring, troubleshooting, and networking Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs) and other industrial assets over Modbus, TCP/IP or EtherNet/IP.
• Deep expertise in data center infrastructure and systems, such as facility monitoring and control systems, thermal dynamics, fluid mechanics, or electrical power distribution networks in a critical environment.
• Experience collaborating with other business units to meet company goals and standards.