Principal Systems Hardware Engineer (AI)

Location: Hybrid in Santa Clara, United States

Salary: $195K–$285K per year, plus equity and bonus opportunities.

Company

hirify.global develops software and hardware innovations that use generative AI to transform technology.

What you will do

• Own end-to-end system architecture from concept and specification through design review, validation, bring-up, and production deployment.
• Author system, board, and rack specifications and review partner and vendor designs against requirements.
• Set technical direction for scale-up and scale-out interconnects, NICs, switches, optics, topology, boards, chassis, power, and thermal architecture.
• Evaluate competing designs through trade-off analysis and what-if scenario planning across interconnect, power, thermal, and mechanical domains.
• Partner with software teams to align hardware decisions with performance and workload needs.
• Establish specification standards, review practices, and AI-assisted engineering workflows.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in hardware systems architecture for large-scale compute or networking systems.
• Hands-on expertise in at least one core domain: interconnect, power, or thermal.
• Experience owning architecture at machine, rack, row, or cluster scale from specification through high-volume production deployment.
• Experience reviewing partner designs and holding vendors to specifications.
• Technical leadership experience driving directional decisions and alignment across teams and partners.
• Degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, or equivalent.

Nice to have

• Experience with hyperscale, HPC, AI/ML, high-end networking, or AI accelerator platforms.
• Experience with scale-up and scale-out fabrics, chip-package-system co-design, or new engineering functions and practices.
• Expertise in high-speed SerDes, PCIe, CXL, optics, BMC/firmware, secure boot, 48V/HVDC power, liquid cooling, fleet-scale RAS, signal integrity, or power integrity.

Culture & Benefits

• Respectful, collaborative, and inclusive working environment.
• Direct communication, humility, and execution-focused collaboration.
• Medical, dental, and vision coverage.
• 401(k) and rewards focused on employee and family wellbeing.
• Individual and company performance incentives.