About the role
This role involves leading a mechanical engineering team responsible for designing enclosures, chassis, and thermal solutions for switching and interconnect hardware.
What you'll do
- Lead, hire, and develop a team of mechanical and thermal engineers.
- Own mechanical design from concept through mass production for chassis, enclosures, line cards, front panels, heatsinks, and cable and fiber management.
- Drive thermal architecture for high-power ASICs and optics, including air cooling and liquid-cooling options such as cold plates.
- Set design standards, review processes (DFM, DFA, tolerance analysis), and documentation practices.
- Partner with silicon, hardware, optics, signal integrity, and systems teams on board layout, component placement, and power budgets.
- Manage contract manufacturers and suppliers for sheet metal, die-cast, machined, and plastic parts through prototype, NPI, and volume ramp.
- Lead compliance and reliability work including NEBS, shock and vibration, safety (UL/IEC), EMC enclosure design, and OCP or OEM rack requirements.
What you'll need
- 10+ years of mechanical design experience on electronic hardware, including 3+ years managing engineers.
- A track record of taking networking, telecom, server, or similar rack-mounted systems from concept to volume production.
- Strong grounding in thermal management for high-power electronics, plus hands-on use of CFD tools (FloTHERM, Icepak, or 6SigmaET).
- Fluency in 3D CAD (Creo, SolidWorks, or NX) and PLM workflows.
- Deep knowledge of DFM/DFA, GD&T, tolerance analysis, and common manufacturing processes.
- Experience working directly with contract manufacturers and suppliers, including overseas.
- Bachelor's Science in Mechanical Engineering or a related field or experience.
Nice to have
- MS in Mechanical Engineering, with a focus on heat transfer or fluid mechanics.
- Liquid-cooling experience: cold plates, manifolds, quick disconnects, or immersion.
- Background in optical networking or pluggable optics (QSFP-DD, OSFP) and their thermal challenges.
- Familiarity with OCP specifications and hyperscale data center deployment requirements.
- Exposure to FEA for structural, shock, and vibration analysis.
More semiconductor jobs: Hardware design jobs · California jobs
This role has been open 31 days — well below the 46-day median for Hardware Systems Engineering roles.
Hardware Systems Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
1126
|
Median days open
46 d
|
Category median salary (all employers)
$150k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Eridu AI | All employers we track in this specialty (1126 roles · 109 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 6 | 1126 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 14 | 6531 · 156 employers |
| Median days open | 45 d | 46 d (−1 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $150k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Intel Corporation · 88 open roles · median 33 d
- KLA Corporation · 66 open roles · median 59 d
- Applied Materials · 60 open roles · median 40 d
- ASML · 59 open roles · median 17 d
- NVIDIA · 58 open roles · median 74 d
- Teradyne · 58 open roles · median 51 d
How we counted: 1126 open Hardware Systems Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 109 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 8 Nov 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.