Principal Electrical Engineer, AI Infrastructure Hardware

About the team

Design the next generation of AI servers at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Own cutting-edge hardware designs and lead innovation from board to rack.

Description

Our OCI Hardware Development organization designs server and rack-scale systems and works closely with partners to develop and integrate new platforms for demanding AI and enterprise workloads. We’re seeking an experienced System Technical Lead with strong hands-on board design expertise to join our team in Burlington, Massachusetts. You’ll own board designs and lead engineering work across Oracle teams and development partners to help design and deliver Oracle’s next generation of servers and rack-scale systems.

Your work will span component selection, schematic capture, electrical analysis, and PCB implementation alongside CAD designers and signal and power integrity engineers. You’ll also help shape system architecture and lead technical reviews with joint design manufacturing (JDM) and original design manufacturing (ODM) partners, evaluating designs, resolving trade-offs, and driving design changes. The role calls for someone equally comfortable designing a board and leading its integration into a complete platform.

You’ll remain hands-on through prototype bring-up, lab debug, and validation, and stay involved through production and sustaining engineering. You’ll see your engineering decisions take shape in hardware deployed across Oracle’s cloud. The position is based on site at our Burlington engineering campus, where hands-on lab work and daily collaboration with engineering partners are central to the role.

Responsibilities

• Develop and own board designs, including component selection and qualification, schematic capture, board floor planning, and electrical design analysis using industry-standard CAD tools.
• Design and integrate processor, accelerator, memory, power delivery, storage, and networking circuitry, including high-speed interfaces and sideband/control buses such as PCIe, DDR, Ethernet, SPI, and I2C/I3C.
• Define PCB design constraints and work closely with CAD designers on stackup, component placement, and routing. Collaborate with signal and power integrity engineers on pre-layout and post-layout analysis to achieve electrical performance and manufacturability targets.
• Develop board and system validation plans and coordinate their execution. Perform hands-on prototype bring-up, rework, debug, and root-cause analysis using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and other lab equipment; implement and verify corrective actions.
• Help shape server and rack platform architecture, defining electrical requirements, system interfaces, and validation criteria. Resolve trade-offs in performance, reliability, power, cost, and manufacturability.
• Provide technical leadership across electrical, mechanical, FPGA, firmware/software, validation, compliance, and operations engineering, working with Oracle teams, technology partners, and JDM/ODM engineers from concept through volume production. Establish clear technical ownership, coordinate engineering work across teams, resolve dependencies, and drive timely engineering decisions.
• Lead architecture, schematic, PCB layout, and validation reviews to ensure product requirements, quality objectives, and compliance targets are met. Identify design gaps and integration risks, document required changes, and work with internal and partner engineers to implement and verify them.
• Coordinate hardware/firmware interfaces, power sequencing, system management, and diagnostics with engineering teams to resolve integration issues and improve platform reliability and serviceability.
• Partner with project managers and engineering leads to define milestones, prototype deliverables, validation schedules, and risk mitigation plans. Communicate technical progress, dependencies, and risks, and recommend actions to keep development on track.
• Author and maintain engineering documentation, including system and board specifications, block diagrams, bills of materials, hardware/firmware interface definitions, test reports, and configuration guides.
• Work with component vendors, manufacturing, operations, and supply chain teams on new product introduction (NPI), resolving build issues and meeting cost and production readiness objectives. Support sustaining engineering through field issue resolution, alternate component qualification, and component end-of-life transitions.
• Mentor and support junior engineers, share design and debugging expertise across teams, and improve engineering practices based on lessons from development and production.

Success in this role depends on earning the trust of engineers across disciplines and working effectively with internal teams and development partners. You’ll bring people together to resolve technical disagreements, make sound design decisions, and keep development moving.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field and 7 years of technical engineering experience; or a master’s degree in these fields and 5 years of experience; or a doctorate in these fields and 3 years of experience; or 11 years of technical engineering experience.
• Relevant experience in server, storage, or compute platform development, combining hands-on board design with cross-functional technical leadership.
• Demonstrated ownership and execution of complex board designs, including component selection, schematic capture, electrical analysis, floor planning, and PCB implementation using tools such as Cadence Concept and Allegro. Experience guiding CAD designers and conducting detailed schematic and layout reviews.
• Practical knowledge of high-speed signal and power integrity, PCB stackup, routing constraints, and power delivery, with experience applying these principles in collaboration with specialist engineers.
• Hardware design experience incorporating high-performance CPUs (Intel, AMD, or ARM-based) and relevant combinations of GPUs, DDR memory, PCIe interfaces, power regulation, storage, networking, and sideband/control buses.
• Hands-on board bring-up, debug, root-cause analysis, and prototype validation using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and other lab equipment, including development and execution of test plans.
• Experience bringing hardware through the product lifecycle, from requirements and concept development through detailed design, system integration, validation, and production, with an understanding of sustaining engineering.
• Demonstrated ability to lead hardware engineering work across internal teams and JDM/ODM design partners, translate system requirements into technical deliverables, establish design ownership and acceptance criteria, and resolve cross-functional dependencies.
• Experience leading technical reviews of externally developed hardware, including schematics, PCB layouts, bills of materials, and validation results. Ability to document required design changes, assess their impact on integration and qualification, and work with partner engineers to implement and verify them.
• Ability to develop clear engineering documentation and communicate design trade-offs, progress, and risks to engineering leadership, program stakeholders, and partner teams.
• Excellent collaboration, communication, and mentoring skills, with the ability to influence technical decisions across organizational boundaries.

Preferred Qualifications

• Recent board design experience with advanced server platforms, including multi-socket designs, Intel or AMD CPUs, NVIDIA or AMD accelerators, PCIe Gen5 and later, DDR memory technologies, NVIDIA NVLink, or other advanced interconnects.
• Knowledge of hardware/firmware integration, system diagnostics, software architecture, or platform firmware such as BIOS/UEFI and BMC.
• Recent experience serving as a system technical lead, technical project lead, or technical program lead for data center server, storage, or GPU platforms while maintaining hands-on board design responsibilities.
• Experience developing and deploying hardware platforms for cloud or hyperscale data centers, including rack-level integration.
• Experience working directly with JDM/ODM engineering teams through NPI, including prototype builds, design qualification, engineering change control, manufacturing readiness reviews, and production ramp.
• Familiarity with global safety, electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), and environmental compliance requirements and certification processes.

Location: Not Remote | On-Site in Burlington, MA

Qualifications

11 years of experience in technical engineering

OR

Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field AND 7 years of experience in technical engineering

OR

Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field AND 5 years of experience in technical engineering

OR

Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field AND 3 years of experience in technical engineering.

Job Skills:

Same as previous level plus;

Field-Programmable Gate Array Design: Demonstrated skill in designing and validating FPGA-based hardware solutions.

11 years of experience in technical engineering

OR

Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field AND 7 years of experience in technical engineering

OR

Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field AND 5 years of experience in technical engineering

OR

Doctorate in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or related field AND 3 years of experience in technical engineering.

5 years of experience in safety and electromagnetic compatibility compliance.