Principal Hardware Systems Engineer - Santa Clara, United States
Originally posted 1 April 2026 by the employer.
About the role
The Principal Hardware Systems Engineer owns system architecture end-to-end from concept through specification, design review, and production deployment across interconnect, board, chassis, and rack-scale platforms. The role serves as the technical anchor for memory-centric architecture and AI inference system hardware.
What you'll do
- Own system architecture end-to-end from concept through specification, design review, and production deployment across teams and partners. - Author system, board, and rack specifications, and review partner designs against requirements to surface misalignment and schedule risk early. - Set direction for interconnect architecture, including scale-up and scale-out fabrics, NICs, switches, optics, and topology. - Set direction for board, chassis, and system architecture across component placement, PCB design, connectors, power, and thermal at chassis, rack, and data-hall scale. - Define validation, bring-up, and qualification strategies for new platforms, and evaluate competing design options using trade-off analysis and scenario planning. - Partner with software teams to align hardware decisions with performance and workload needs while establishing specification standards and review practices.
What you'll need
- 8+ years of experience in hardware systems architecture, including hands-on expertise in interconnect, power, or thermal domains for large-scale compute or networking systems. - Experience owning hardware system architecture at machine, rack, row, or cluster scale from specification through bring-up and high-volume production deployment. - Experience reviewing partner designs and holding vendors to specification. - Ability to drive trade-off analysis across adjacent domains including interconnect, power, thermal, and mechanical. - Demonstrated technical leadership in owning directional hardware decisions and driving alignment across teams and partners. - Degree in EE, CE, ME, CS, or equivalent.
Nice to have
- Experience in hardware systems architecture for hyperscale, HPC, AI/ML, or high-end networking platforms. - Experience with AI accelerator systems and their scale-up/scale-out fabrics. - Chip-package-system co-design experience. - Expertise in one or more of: high-speed SerDes, PCIe, CXL, optics, BMC, firmware, secure boot, 48V, HVDC power delivery, liquid cooling, fleet-scale RAS, or signal and power integrity. - Experience establishing new engineering functions or practices.
This role has been open 129 days — well above the 51-day median for Hardware Systems Engineering roles.
Hardware Systems Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
1011
|
Median days open
51 d
|
Median salary
$155k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, and who else is hiring
| Metric | d-Matrix | All employers we track in this specialty (1011 roles · 103 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 5 | 1011 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 23 | 6298 · 144 employers |
| Median days open | 56 d | 51 d (+5 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $155k |
Who's hiring in this category
- Intel Corporation · 74 open roles · median 35 d
- KLA Corporation · 63 open roles · median 49 d
- Teradyne · 60 open roles · median 35 d
- NVIDIA · 52 open roles · median 70 d
- Applied Materials · 49 open roles · median 70 d
- AMD · 45 open roles · median 52 d
How we counted: 1011 open Hardware Systems Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 103 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 23 Oct 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.