AI Controls Solutions Engineer (HVAC Systems)

About Phaidra

Phaidra is building the future of industrial automation.

The world today is filled with static, monolithic infrastructure. Factories, power plants, buildings, etc. operate the same they've operated for decades — because the controls programming is hard-coded. Thousands of lines of rules and heuristics that define how the machines interact with each other. The result of all this hard-coding is that facilities are frozen in time, unable to adapt to their environment while their performance slowly degrades.

Phaidra creates AI-powered control systems for the industrial sector, enabling industrial facilities to automatically learn and improve over time. Specifically:

• We use reinforcement learning algorithms to provide this intelligence, converting raw sensor data into high-value actions and decisions.

• We focus on industrial applications, which tend to be well-sensorized with measurable KPIs — perfect for reinforcement learning.

• We enable domain experts (our users) to configure the AI control systems (i.e. agents) without writing code. They define what they want their AI agents to do, and we do it for them.

Our team has a track record of applying AI to some of the toughest problems. From achieving superhuman performance with DeepMind's AlphaGo , to reducing the energy required to cool Google's Data Centers by 40%, we deeply understand AI and how to apply it in production for massive impact.

Phaidra’s ability to achieve its mission is determined by our ability to work together — as defined by our core values: Agency, Velocity , Craft , and Truth . We seek individuals who embody these values, as they are instrumental in ensuring our team consistently delivers excellence and fosters an engaging and supportive culture

Phaidra is based in the USA, but we are 100% remote with no physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, OysterHR . Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Singapore, Australia, and India.

Who You Are

As an AI Controls Solutions Engineer, you'll play a critical role in operationalizing and scaling Phaidra's solutions for enterprise data center customers.

We are seeking a team member located in the following area: USA or Canada.

Responsibilities

You will work closely with the Technical Program Managers (TPMs) and Data Scientists (DSs), as the technical experts for Phaidra's customers. Your role is to use Phaidra's platform and tools to put AI into production.

This role can be broken down into four concrete areas of responsibility:

• You will use Phaidra’s products and your knowledge of the customers' needs to create a model of the facility for ingestion by our product lineup. This will require working closely with our Data Science team. You’ll understand the facility and configure our products according the facility and customer requirements. Then, you will commission and tune our products and assist in analyzing and triaging these systems in the support phase.

• You will work with the product team to identify and define product requirements based upon each customer’s specification and needs. You will work closely with other AI Controls Solutions Engineers and the Product team to ensure our automated tools enable Phaidra to scale across thousands of customers. You will translate a combination of customer-stated and customer-implied needs into coherent needs documentation for use by the software development team.

• You will provide ongoing support of deployed products, including support issue resolution and monitoring of performance. ****You will lead the deployment and support of multiple Solutions, perhaps in parallel. This includes resolving onboarding or support tickets by coordinating with the appropriate stakeholders or providing direct solutions. You will analyze the performance and viability of your engineered solutions, as well as troubleshoot, triage, and analyze issues with control systems and equipment. You will possess deep knowledge of Phaidra’s pipelines to effectively identify and address issues and actively manage risk.

• You will act as an internal and customer-facing SME on a range of initiatives, including the delivery of platinum support to customers, providing technical advice to research projects, and supporting sales and marketing efforts.

*This role can include 25% travel

Key Qualifications

• 5-10 years of work experience as a controls engineer, programmer, or equivalent.

• Possesses expertise in HVAC and Data Center cooling control methodologies and strategies and displays knowledge of chiller plant fundamentals, configurations, and sequence of operations

• Understanding of applied thermodynamics for cooling systems, refrigeration systems, and hydronics.

• Experience in controls design engineering, or strong working knowledge of industrial and commercial control systems and protocols such as BACnet and Modbus.

• Understanding the applications and control strategies of air side chilled water and direct expansion cooling systems.

• Strong proficiency in working with data center operations teams and contributing to solving field operations related problems and challenges.

• Experience programming control systems with PLC, ladder logic, text, or block programming languages.

• Passion for problem solving and using scalable solutions to solve repeat problems.

• Good educational background in one or more related disciplines pertinent to your area of expertise. Example disciplines include Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Control Theory, Applied Mathematics and other various engineering and applied science fields.

• Ability to read and write Python scripts (in collaboration with the software engineering team) to implement Phaidra's AI development tool for customer use cases.

• Exhibits excellent communication skills and has the ability to explain complex domain specific concepts to non-domain experts and also explain complex AI and ML specific concepts to non-AI/ML specific customers.

• Ability to own and manage large sections of documentation, fostering a culture of high standards in documentation and communication.

• Ability to understand customers well and drive a culture of pragmatic urgency and customer satisfaction.

• Supports peers and helps them to improve their work and does pairing sessions.

• Independently uses AI tools to improve workflows, automate repetitive tasks, and support onboarding and troubleshooting.

• Alignment with Phaidra's values: Agency, Velocity, Craft, & Truth.

Preferred Skills & Experience

• Experience with rapidly prototyping new technologies and converting into commercially viable products.

• Experience building, owning, and operating your own codebases/services.

• Experience architecting services within cloud platforms.

• Experience applying AI and ML in controls applications.

• Experience with statistics, analytics, etc.

• Experience with domain relevant optimization problems and solutions.

• Familiarity with markup languages like Xml, Json, or Yaml.

Onboarding

In your first 30 days...

• You will have a solid understanding of what Phaidra does and how we do it.

• You will have met with team members across Phaidra and started building relationships that will help you be successful at your job.

• You will have become proficient at navigating the Solution team’s processes and software tools.

By your first 60 days...

• You will introduce yourself to our customers

• You will understand our customer onboarding process

• You will dig into Mort, our project workflow tool

• You will build a toy system from scratch

By your first 90 days...

• You will participate in troubleshooting issues

• You will participate in customer onboarding and new system creation

• You will contribute to code repository

• You will create and refine business processes

• You will attend site visits

…