Staff Hardware Engineer

About the role

You will work across several product teams at a systems company where no single board tells the whole story and the hardest problems live at the interfaces. Staff engineers here own the seams between teams: backplanes, interconnects, power distribution, and the system-level trade-offs nobody else can see whole. You will make the entire product work, not just your piece of it, through architecture, rigorous interface definition, and relentless attention to the boundaries where complex systems usually fail. Success here looks like smooth integrations, short debug cycles, and teams that trust the interfaces you defined enough to build in parallel with confidence.

What you will achieve

• Own system-level hardware architecture spanning multiple boards, backplanes, and cable interconnects from concept definition through production release
• Drive interface agreements between teams covering connector pinouts, power budgets, thermal envelopes, and timing budgets that hold firm through production
• Deliver system bring-up plans with clear sequencing and debug ownership that get complex multi-board assemblies functional on first integration
• Reduce cross-team integration bugs substantially by instituting interface reviews, shared simulation models, and contract-style ICDs everyone follows
• Serve as the escalation point for the hardest electrical issues across all product lines, resolving them with systematic, documented analysis

What you will bring

Must-haves

• 8 to 12 years of hardware design with demonstrated experience owning systems of multiple interacting boards or modules in production
• Strong grasp of system-level signal integrity, power distribution network design, and grounding strategy across enclosures and backplanes
• Experience defining connector, backplane, and cable interconnect requirements backed by signal integrity validation and compliance testing
• Proven ability to influence without authority across firmware, mechanical, manufacturing, and program management teams
• Track record of debugging system-level issues including crosstalk, ground bounce, power sequencing faults, and EMI with methodical lab work
• Experience establishing design review processes that span multiple teams, sites, and time zones effectively
• BS in Electrical Engineering; MS preferred for the analytical depth this role needs

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with optical interconnects, active cables, or other high-speed cable assembly technologies
• Familiarity with chassis-level thermal and mechanical constraints and genuine electro-mechanical co-design practice
• Background in telecom, datacenter, or aerospace system hardware developed at meaningful production scale
• Knowledge of reliability engineering practices including derating and HALT applied to complex multi-board systems