Senior Principal Mechanical Engineer (AI Infrastructure)

Location: Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, United States

Salary: $170,000–$210,000 per year, depending on experience, level, and business needs. Discretionary bonuses, incentives, and benefits may be available.

Company

Provides rack-scale AI infrastructure through connectivity solutions integrating CXL, Ethernet, NVLink, PCIe, UALink, and software technologies.

What you will do

• Lead mechanical architecture from device-level products through complete rack-scale AI systems.
• Design GPU compute platforms, switch platforms, rack controllers, enclosures, cable management systems, and Open Rack platforms.
• Define rack layouts, mechanical interfaces, architecture standards, and integration approaches for compute, power, cooling, optical connectivity, and management systems.
• Develop mechanical solutions for fiber infrastructure, optical engines, silicon photonics, NPO, CPO, and rack-to-rack optical connectivity.
• Partner with Thermal Engineering on airflow, cold-plate integration, liquid cooling, and coolant distribution infrastructure.
• Lead system integration, supplier and ODM engagement, design validation, manufacturing readiness, and cost optimization.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s, master’s, or PhD in Mechanical Engineering or a related discipline.
• 15+ years of experience in mechanical design and system integration.
• Experience leading mechanical architecture for servers, networking platforms, storage systems, AI infrastructure, or data center hardware.
• Expertise in sheet metal design, structural analysis, tolerance analysis, mechanical packaging, cable management, and system integration.
• Experience with Design for Manufacturing (DFM) and Design for Assembly (DFA).
• Strong systems thinking, technical leadership, cross-functional influence, and communication skills.

Nice to have

• Open Rack and OCP architecture experience.
• Experience with PCIe Scale-Up, UALink, Ethernet, and optical networking systems.
• Knowledge of fiber connectivity, optical packaging, NPO, and CPO platforms.
• Experience developing liquid-cooled infrastructure and working with ODM/JDM manufacturing partners.

Culture & Benefits

• Cross-functional collaboration across Thermal, Power, Electrical, Silicon, Software, System Architecture, Product Management, and Manufacturing.
• Direct collaboration with Accton, Hyve, Wistron, Quanta, Gigabyte, and other ODM partners.
• Opportunity to shape infrastructure for large-scale AI clusters and future AI factory deployments.
• Discretionary bonuses, incentives, and benefits may be available.