Hardware Board Design Engineer

International Recruiting LLC•San Jose, CA

8d•$150,000 - $250,000•Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking a hands-on Hardware Board Design Engineer to design server motherboards and related cards that integrate silicon into working systems. Reporting directly to the CEO, you will own complex PCB designs from system requirements through bring-up and manufacturing. The highest priorities are board design, component placement, and PCB stack-up and layer-count optimization. You should also understand board-level power delivery and thermal considerations and work effectively with the relevant specialists.

Requirements

5-10 years of hands-on experience designing complex server motherboards or comparable high-performance computing boards from schematics through bring-up and validation.
Demonstrated experience with CPU, GPU, server or accelerator card platforms, including board-level integration of processors, memory, high-speed interfaces and supporting components.
Strong experience with component placement, PCB stack-up and layer-count optimization, including design tradeoffs that improve manufacturability and cost.
Experience with high-speed and control interfaces such as Ethernet, PCIe Gen5, I2C, SPI and UART.
Working knowledge of board-level power delivery and thermal analysis, with the ability to understand requirements, review results and collaborate with domain specialists.
Proficiency with schematic capture and PCB design tools, hands-on lab debugging and test equipment, and clear documentation for manufacturing partners.
Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without visa sponsorship.

Nice To Haves

We encourage you to apply even if you do not meet every qualification.

Responsibilities

Lead the end-to-end design of server motherboards, accelerator cards, mezzanine cards and related base boards for CPU- and GPU-based systems.
Translate system requirements into board architecture, schematics, component selection and component placement, with clear ownership from design through bring-up.
Drive PCB stack-up and layer-count optimization to achieve manufacturable, cost-effective designs while meeting performance and reliability requirements.
Understand board-level power delivery requirements and thermal constraints, and incorporate them into component placement, layout guidance and design tradeoffs.
Work with power integrity, thermal, signal integrity, PCB and mechanical specialists to review analysis results and resolve system-level design issues.
Collaborate with ODMs/OEMs on system requirements, bring-up and validation plans, and manufacturing readiness.
Bring up and debug base boards and mezzanine cards, define test plans and test equipment, and maintain PCBA documentation, including BOMs and special assembly processes.
Take ownership of engineering decisions and stay closely involved in design, testing and problem-solving.
Work directly with the chip team during early product definition to analyze multiple what-if scenarios and evaluate tradeoffs in board architecture, component placement, PCB layer count, performance, cost, manufacturability, power delivery and thermal constraints before the design is finalized.
Bring curiosity about AI workloads and a willingness to learn quickly in a small, fast-moving engineering team.