Our client is a network observability and security company that helps some of the largest and most complex organizations in the world protect their hybrid networks and data. Their platform gives security, cloud, and observability teams the visibility they need to eliminate blind spots, optimize network traffic, and reduce tool cost and complexity — trusted by a large base of global enterprise, telecom, government, and education customers.

They are seeking a Principal Hardware Engineer to join a small, dynamic Hardware Engineering team building innovative networking products. This is a senior technical role leading system and board-level architecture, digital and analog circuit design, and signal integrity from concept through production, working closely with transceiver vendors, contract manufacturers, customers, and cross-functional teams to deliver reliable, high-performance, manufacturable products.

This is a full-time role based in the client's Greater San Jose, CA area office.

What You’ll Do

• Define system and board-level architectures and high-level concepts for new networking products.
• Design and develop board-level circuits across digital and analog technologies, including high-speed interfaces, clocking, power distribution, and system interconnects.
• Apply electrical and signal integrity fundamentals to guide design decisions and resolve high-speed system-level challenges, and establish signal integrity rules, design constraints, and compliance requirements.
• Apply optical communications knowledge when specifying new transceiver SKUs and collaborating with transceiver vendors.
• Lead conceptual design, component selection, design simulation, detailed design, schematic capture, and PCB design-rule development, including high-speed bus and power regulation circuit design.
• Apply Ethernet standards (including IEEE 802.3) to networking product development.
• Support PCB layout, board- and system-level bring-up, debugging, verification, and validation, using lab equipment such as oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and protocol analyzers.
• Manage prototype builds with contract manufacturers and support design transfer, production introduction, and manufacturing readiness.
• Investigate development, production, and field-reported failures, identify root causes, and implement corrective actions.
• Drive design reviews, technical trade-off analyses, engineering documentation, and test plans, and mentor engineers across hardware development projects.

What You’ve Done

• Earned a bachelor's or master's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or an equivalent technical field.
• Gained 10–15 years of experience designing networking products, communications hardware, server platforms, high-performance computing systems, or equivalent hardware.
• Demonstrated expertise in system and hardware architecture, schematic capture, component selection, PCB design, and system-level design, with a solid understanding of signal integrity principles for high-speed digital hardware.
• Designed and debugged digital and analog hardware incorporating high-speed buses, processors, memory, networking devices, transceivers, and related subsystems.
• Led board bring-up, hardware debugging, verification, validation, and failure/root-cause analysis.