AI Controls Solutions Engineer (North America)

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: Transparency, Collaboration, Operational Excellence, Ownership, and Empathy. 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 100% remote; we do not have a physical office. We hire employees internationally with the help of our partner, OysterHR. Our team is currently located throughout the USA, Canada, UK, Norway, Italy, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Japan, Singapore, 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.

Responsibilities

You will work closely with the Technical Account Managers (TAMs) and Data Scientists, 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 two concrete areas of responsibility:

• As the subject matter expert, (SME), you will use Phaidra’s products and your knowledge of the customers' needs to create a model of the facility for ingestion by the AI Agent. This will require working closely with our AI research and machine learning application engineering teams as they create the algorithms that turn sensor data into actionable insights. You will work closely with Phaidra's customers to help them get the most out of our technologies, crisply defining the AI problem (objective function, actions, constraints), understanding the technology's capabilities and limitations, identifying opportunities for value creation, and rapidly deploying solutions to production using Phaidra's platform and tools.
• 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.

*This role can include 25% travel

Key Qualifications

• 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.
• Experience programming control systems with PLC, ladder logic, text, or block programming languages.
• Deep understanding of data center specific controls and cooling methodologies.
• 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.
• Ability to