AECOM is seeking a hands-on CFD Engineer to join its Data Center team. This individual-contributor role is responsible for executing internal and external airflow, thermal, and equipment-discharge studies with minimal oversight. The successful candidate will convert complex simulation results into practical design actions, clearly communicate assumptions and limitations, and help establish repeatable, high-quality CFD workflows across multiple concurrent projects.
- Own the full CFD study lifecycle: clarify the design question, define scope and acceptance criteria, develop the methodology, build geometry, generate the mesh, establish boundary conditions, solve, verify convergence, post-process results, and issue technical reports.
- Perform internal data hall studies addressing rack inlet temperatures, airflow distribution, hot- and cold-aisle containment, bypass and recirculation, raised-floor or slab configurations, cooling-unit placement, rack density, failure modes, and capacity-expansion scenarios.
- Perform external studies for cooling towers, chillers, dry coolers, generator and boiler exhaust, mechanical yards, relief air, outdoor-air intakes, heat rejection, plume behavior, short-circuiting, and thermal re-entrainment.
- Conduct steady-state and transient analyses for cooling-system outages, equipment failures, load changes, control sequences, thermal ride-through, and other operating scenarios defined by the project team.
- Develop defensible modeling assumptions using design documents, equipment data, controls narratives, weather data, commissioning information, and field measurements; identify data gaps and document their impact on conclusions.
- Apply sound verification and validation practices, including mesh-sensitivity checks, mass and energy balance reviews, convergence assessment, comparison with hand calculations, and correlation to measured or monitoring data when available.
- Evaluate results against project-specific criteria and relevant guidance, including ASHRAE TC 9.9 thermal guidance and applicable client, code, and industry requirements.
- Translate findings into prioritized, actionable recommendations for equipment selection, airflow management, containment, intake/exhaust separation, controls, phasing, redundancy, and operational resilience.
- Prepare concise, client-ready reports and visualizations that clearly communicate methodology, assumptions, scenarios, results, risks, limitations, and recommended next steps.
- Present findings and coordinate directly with multidisciplinary project teams to resolve issues and confirm implementation of recommendations.
- Contribute to standardized templates, modeling procedures, quality-control checklists, libraries, and lessons learned; support technical knowledge sharing and mentoring of less-experienced staff.