Lead Principal Electrical Engineer

Oracle•Santa Clara, CA

24d•$146,300 - $306,400•Onsite

About The Position

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Hardware Engineering defines, develops, qualifies, and sustains server, storage, networking, rack-scale AI, and compute platforms throughout their lifecycle, from concept through deployment and ongoing engineering escalation support. The Lead Principal Electrical Engineer is a hands-on senior individual contributor who develops AI/GPU, compute, and storage platforms, owns system-level technical decisions, and leads cross-functional teams and external partners from platform definition through production readiness and field issue resolution. The role has no people-management responsibilities and requires onsite work at Oracle’s campus in Santa Clara, California. The position leads the architecture, implementation, integration, validation, characterization, and improvement of internally and partner-developed GPU and compute platforms at server and rack levels. It owns platform requirements, architectural tradeoffs, technical risk resolution, validation strategy, and release criteria; authors system-level specifications and related technical documentation; and leads design reviews across electrical, mechanical, thermal, power, signal-integrity, and firmware disciplines. The role also drives hardware, firmware, and software bring-up and debugging; defines monitoring and diagnostic requirements; evaluates components for future platforms; leads partner and supplier execution through qualification and production readiness; resolves complex issues across the platform lifecycle; mentors engineers; and communicates status and recommendations to engineering leadership and executives.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a closely related technical discipline.
Typically 16+ years of hardware and systems engineering experience, including recent technical leadership of complex server, AI/GPU, storage, or networking platforms.
Proven ownership of complex hardware platforms from architecture through qualification and production deployment.
Ability to independently resolve ambiguous problems across hardware, firmware, software, manufacturing, and system configuration.
Demonstrated ability to technically lead internal engineering teams and external development partners through design decisions, technical issue resolution, and production readiness.
Strong understanding of x86 and ARM server architectures, CPUs, GPUs and AI accelerators, DDR memory, PCIe, high-speed Ethernet, storage, and BMC and firmware architectures.
Experience reviewing hierarchical schematics, high-density PCB layouts, cross-board connectivity, power architecture, signal integrity, and mechanical and thermal designs.
Hands-on experience with system bring-up, BIOS/UEFI, BMC firmware, Linux-based diagnostics, scripting, and hardware debugging tools.
Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain technical issues and tradeoffs to executives.

Nice To Haves

Experience with NVIDIA, AMD, or other AI accelerator platforms and supplier test and characterization tools.
Experience with rack-scale AI/GPU systems, high-speed fabric design, PCIe Gen5/Gen6, CXL, NVLink/NVSwitch, or equivalent technologies.
Knowledge of hardware and platform security, including roots of trust, secure boot, device attestation, SPDM, TPM, and BMC security.
Experience designing for and supporting high-volume manufacturing and cloud deployment.
Experience defining factory test and reliability requirements for cloud hardware platforms.

Responsibilities

Lead architecture, implementation, integration, and validation of internally developed and partner-developed GPU and compute platforms at server and rack levels, adapting to program needs.
Own platform requirements, architectural tradeoffs, technical risk resolution, validation strategy, and release criteria.
Author and maintain system-level hardware specifications, high-level block diagrams, product concept documents, and configuration guides.
Lead design reviews covering architecture, schematics, board layout, mechanical design, thermal management, power delivery, signal integrity, and firmware.
Drive platform bring-up and debugging across hardware, firmware, and software.
Lead system characterization and performance evaluation against requirements and drive system-level improvements.
Define telemetry, diagnostics, error reporting, and in-service monitoring requirements with cloud operations and security teams.
Evaluate processors, accelerators, memory, storage, networking, and platform-management components for future platforms.
Lead technical execution with JDM partners, ODMs, suppliers, and manufacturing, quality, and sourcing teams to meet platform requirements, qualification criteria, and production-readiness milestones.
Lead root-cause analysis and resolution of complex issues across development, manufacturing, deployment, and fleet operations.
Mentor engineers across hardware, firmware, systems engineering, and validation.
Communicate platform status, risks, tradeoffs, and recommendations to engineering leadership and executives.
Implement strategic electrical-system architectures, component-selection strategies, system-wide optimization frameworks, enterprise-level validation strategies, and technical documentation frameworks.
Contribute to thought leadership and research and development initiatives in electrical-system innovation.