Sr. Staff Engineer, Data Center

Linked In 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 also committed to providing transformational opportunities for our own employees by investing in their growth. We aspire to create a culture that's built on trust, care, inclusion, and fun – where everyone can succeed.

Join us to transform the way the world works.

At Linked In, our approach to flexible work is centered on trust and optimized for culture, connection, clarity, and the evolving needs of our business. The work location of this role is hybrid, meaning it will be performed both from home and from a Linked In office on select days, as determined by the business needs of the team.

This role will be based in Mountain View, CA, Hillsboro, OR, Richardson, TX, Plano, TX or Manassas, VA.

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 include:

• 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 Linked In’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 Linked In’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 Linked In’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,…