VP of Systems (AI Hardware)

Location: On-site in Austin, Texas, or Sunnyvale, California

Salary: $335,000–$400,000 annually plus equity

Company

hirify.global is an AI hardware startup developing silicon-photonic inference systems with programmable metasurfaces to improve compute density, performance, and energy efficiency.

What you will do

• Own development and delivery of inference servers, racks, and full-scale products.
• Lead accelerator baseboard, module carrier, front-panel board, interconnect, PCIe, and scale-out fabric development.
• Own end-to-end power architecture, transient budgets, protection coordination, and high-speed channel budgets.
• Direct hardware, firmware, and software system bring-up, board validation, and system qualification.
• Define system reliability, availability, and serviceability budgets and flow them down to modules.
• Build and lead the Systems organization while owning schedules, budgets, architecture, and EVT/DVT/PVT design gates.

Requirements

• 15+ years of hardware development experience and a BS/MS in electrical or mechanical engineering, or equivalent experience.
• Experience shipping server or rack products at volume through an ODM, OEM, contract manufacturer, hyperscaler, or DGX-class program.
• Extensive line-management experience and a track record of scaling a hardware engineering organization.
• Deep expertise in board and system electrical design, including layout direction, on-board power, signal and power integrity, PCIe Gen6/7, Ethernet, OSFP, and validation.
• Experience owning end-to-end high-speed link budgets, 800G+ Ethernet, power architecture, rack/tray/board architecture, and EVT/DVT/PVT qualification.
• Fluent from L1–L10, from component and PCB design through complete server-node assembly and validation; this is a full-time onsite role in Texas or California.

Nice to have

• Rack or cluster integration for AI training and inference deployments.
• Ethernet leaf-spine networking, RDMA/RoCE, and scale-out fabric expertise.
• OCP experience with OAM, UBB, and ORv3 rack power.
• 0-to-1 startup experience or experience with optical, photonic, or analog-heavy systems.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative engineering environment focused on photonics and AI hardware.
• Health plan premiums fully covered for employees and dependents, with HSA contributions.
• Unlimited paid time off.
• 401(k) matching and stock option opportunities.
• Dental, vision, life, hospital, critical illness, and accident insurance options.
• Personalized benefits plans with cash-back options for unused coverage.