You will spend most of your time reviewing and shaping customer hardware designs covering board architecture, PCB stack-up and material selection, power architecture, thermal design, mechanical integration, and reliability and retain full hands-on capability across the entire design lifecycle from architecture through schematic, layout guidance, and bring-up. Job Summary: As Senior Principal Engineer (Board & System Hardware Design AI & Cloud Infrastructure), you will be the senior technical authority guiding customer hardware design-in on the Ethernet Switch and UALink platforms, and a key technical bridge between the silicon teams, internal hardware engineering, and the field.
Numbers & Facts
Location
Santa Clara, CA
Salary
$200,000–$266,400 Per Year
Description
Job Summary:
As Senior Principal Engineer (Board & System Hardware Design AI & Cloud Infrastructure), you will be the senior technical authority guiding customer hardware design-in on the Ethernet Switch and UALink platforms, and a key technical bridge between the silicon teams, internal hardware engineering, and the field. Your primary mission is to ensure that customers' next-generation switches, AI fabric platforms, and networking systems are designed right the first time performant, manufacturable, reliable, and ready for high-volume production.
This is a deep individual contributor role with a strong system-design and productization focus. You will spend most of your time reviewing and shaping customer hardware designs covering board architecture, PCB stack-up and material selection, power architecture, thermal design, mechanical integration, and reliability and retain full hands-on capability across the entire design lifecycle from architecture through schematic, layout guidance, and bring-up. You will also play a central role in defining and supporting reference designs for new silicon and serving as a trusted technical educator to both customers and internal teams. You will be a key technical voice in the evolution toward 224G and 448G SerDes-class systems and the emerging open AI fabric standards.
Role & Responsibilities:
Serve as the senior technical advisor to customer hardware teams designing platforms around the Ethernet switches and UALink silicon, from early architecture through production ramp.
Lead design-in reviews of customer schematics, PCB stack-ups, and overall system architectures, identifying risks early and guiding customers to best-in-class implementations.
Define, develop, and support reference designs for new silicon partnering with silicon, packaging, and internal HW engineering teams from early product definition through customer release.
Work closely with internal hardware engineering and silicon teams as a feedback channel from the field influencing silicon I/O, package, power, and reference design choices based on real customer deployment learnings.
Drive PCB stack-up strategy and material selection (low-loss laminates, copper roughness, glass weave, via construction) to meet high-speed performance and cost targets.
Own architecture, schematic, layout guidance, and bring-up of reference and evaluation platforms, applying full lifecycle hands-on expertise where needed.
Guide customers on power delivery architecture, including PDN design, multi-rail sequencing, decoupling strategy, and tolerance analysis for high-current ASICs.
Advise on thermal design, mechanical integration, and cooling strategies (air, liquid, immersion) to meet performance and reliability targets in real deployments.
Provide guidance on signal and power integrity, reviewing customer SI/PI simulations and contributing simulations directly when the project requires it.
Drive design for reliability, manufacturability, and testability ensuring smooth transitions to production at ODM/CM partners.
Develop and deliver technical training to customers and internal teams covering core silicon, reference designs, high-speed design best practices, and productization methodologies.
Provide technical leadership on 112G and 224G PAM4 SerDes designs today, and help shape the hardware approach for next-generation 448G systems.
Lead hardware bring-up support, root-cause debug, and issue resolution during customer lab phases and early production.
Partner closely with Silicon Design, Packaging, SI/PI, Software, and Operations teams to deliver fully integrated solutions.
Contribute to product definition and roadmap planning by bringing real-world customer feedback into architecture and marketing discussions.
Represent the organization's hardware expertise in customer briefings, executive reviews, and industry technical forums.
What We're Looking For:
PhD, Master's, or Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
15+ years of experience in hardware design, development, and validation of high-speed networking or compute systems.
7+ years of dedicated experience in board and system design for high-speed platforms involving modern SerDes (25G NRZ through 112G/224G PAM4).
Proven full-lifecycle ownership of complex high-speed boards: architecture, schematic, layout guidance, and bring-up.
Demonstrated experience defining and delivering reference designs that enabled customer or internal platform adoption.
Strong expertise in PCB stack-up design and material selection for high-speed, high-layer-count boards.
Deep experience with power architecture for high-current ASICs, including PDN design, sequencing, decoupling, and tolerance analysis.
Solid background in thermal design and mechanical integration for high-power network and AI systems.
Working knowledge of SI/PI principles, with the ability to review customer simulations and run targeted simulations independently when needed.
Hands-on experience with hardware bring-up, lab debug, and root-cause analysis using industry-standard lab equipment.
Deep understanding of high-speed interfaces: Ethernet, PCIe, DDR, advanced SerDes, and modern power delivery architectures.
Strong grasp of design for reliability, manufacturability, and testability across the product lifecycle.
Proven ability to develop and deliver technical training content to engineering audiences.
Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence senior customer engineering teams and collaborate across disciplines and geographies.
Preferred Qualifications:
Direct experience with Ethernet switch platforms (any tier) and/or emerging open AI fabric standards and architectures.
Experience designing or reviewing platforms targeting megascale data center deployments.
Background in reference platform design and customer enablement for silicon-based solutions.
Familiarity with ODM/CM manufacturing flows, including DFM/DFT, qualification, and reliability testing.
Experience with advanced cooling approaches (liquid, immersion) for high-power AI/networking platforms.
EDA tool fluency in either Cadence (Allegro/Sigrity) or Mentor/Siemens (Xpedition/HyperLynx) ecosystems tool-agnostic candidates with deep expertise welcome.
Track record of influencing silicon and platform roadmaps based on customer and field insights.
Leadership & Impact: As a senior technical leader within the Customer Solutions Group, you will:
Set the technical bar for board and system hardware design quality across the most strategic customer engagements.
Serve as a key technical interface between customers, silicon teams, and internal hardware engineering accelerating learning in both directions.
Mentor engineers across the team and lead training for customers and internal stakeholders, raising collective expertise in system design, productization, and customer enablement.
Shape the direction of customer-facing hardware solutions and influence next-generation product evolution.
Act as a technical ambassador, representing the hardware capabilities to top-tier customers and partners.
Travel as needed to customer sites, ODMs, and labs typically project-driven rather than continuous.