Designs, develops, and integrates complex electrical systems for hardware products, ensuring they meet functional, performance, power efficiency, security, and reliability requirements. Completes parts selection, qualification, Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) design, and schematic capture for electrical subsystems. Conducts testing, integration, and validation of analog and digital systems and subsystems. Develops technical documentation, including specifications, test plans, test reports, signal integrity constraints, and bills of materials. Remains up-to-date on advancements in electrical subsystem technologies, including industry standards, tools, and best practices.
About the Role
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Hardware Engineering develops and supports the physical infrastructure behind Oracle Cloud from enterprise compute and storage servers to the hardware platforms that power large-scale cloud, data center, and AI workloads.
We are seeking a Principal Electrical Engineer – Server Hardware Validation to join our OCI Hardware Engineering team On-Site in Burlington, Massachusetts. This is a hands-on technical role for an experienced electrical or hardware engineer who enjoys solving difficult problems at the board, subsystem, and server-platform level.
You will lead complex hardware validation and sustaining engineering efforts throughout the product lifecycle, from New Product Introduction (NPI) through production. You will develop validation strategies, qualify components and alternate sources, investigate hardware failures, and work across engineering, suppliers, and manufacturing to drive issues to root cause and resolution.
This is a highly cross-functional role requiring deep technical collaboration with firmware, software, operating system, and service engineering teams to perform root-cause analysis and develop, implement, and validate effective corrective actions.
This role works closely with our hardware lab in Burlington and provides an opportunity to have direct technical impact on the reliability, quality, and manufacturing continuity of Oracle's server infrastructure.
Responsibilities
- Lead system- and subsystem-level electrical validation for server hardware across NPI and sustaining engineering activities.
- Contribute to formal design reviews and provide validation-driven feedback to improve product quality, reliability, and manufacturability.
- Develop validation strategies, test plans, test coverage, procedures, and technical reports for PCBA and subsystem-level server assemblies.
- Perform hands-on hardware validation, troubleshooting, and rigorous root-cause analysis (RCCA) for complex board-, subsystem-, server-, factory-, and field-level failures.
- Collaborate with firmware, software, operating system, diagnostics, field service, manufacturing, and other engineering teams to isolate issues and determine root cause.
- Drive corrective actions from investigation through implementation and validation, balancing technical rigor with the need to resolve critical hardware issues quickly.
- Lead qualification of alternate-source components and support Approved Vendor List (AVL) and end-of-life component activities to maintain manufacturing continuity.
- Analyze complex hardware changes and determine appropriate validation coverage based on interactions across electrical subsystems, interfaces, firmware, software, and system configurations.
- Use high-speed oscilloscopes, differential probes, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers, and other laboratory instrumentation to characterize and troubleshoot electrical behavior.
- Investigate signal integrity, power integrity, timing, noise, interoperability, and other electrical issues affecting system performance and reliability.
- Validate high-speed interfaces and electrical subsystems across varying hardware, firmware, load, and environmental conditions.
- Partner with electrical design, CAD, suppliers, manufacturing, and other engineering teams on validation, qualification, and complex technical issues.
- Review schematics, component specifications, PCB layouts, and other engineering documentation as part of validation, qualification, and root-cause investigations.
- Document specifications, validation plans, test results, technical findings, constraints, corrective actions, and engineering decisions.
- Provide technical leadership and mentorship to other engineers, helping teams work through ambiguous and technically challenging validation and debug problems.
Qualifications
- Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related field and 7+ years of relevant technical engineering experience; Master's degree and 5+ years.
- Strong systems-level electrical or hardware engineering background, including validation and troubleshooting of complex computing, server, embedded, or related hardware platforms.
- Proven ability to develop and lead complex hardware validation and qualification efforts.
- Deep hands-on proficiency with high-speed oscilloscopes and laboratory instrumentation, including differential probes, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers, and related measurement tools.
- Strong knowledge of electrical signal integrity concepts, including timing, jitter, noise, and frequency-domain analysis.
- Demonstrated ability to debug complex board- and subsystem-level hardware issues using schematics, electrical measurements, test data, and systematic root-cause analysis.
- Strong analytical, diagnostic, and problem-solving skills with the ability to investigate ambiguous failures spanning multiple hardware and system domains.
- Ability to collaborate deeply across hardware, firmware, software, operating system, diagnostics, field service, manufacturing, supplier, and other engineering teams.
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to clearly document and communicate complex technical findings.
- Technical leadership and mentoring skills, with the ability to guide engineers through complex validation, debug, and root-cause investigations.
Preferred Qualifications
- Background in the design, validation, or sustaining of enterprise servers, data center infrastructure, or other large-scale computing platforms.
- Knowledge of Intel, AMD, or other processor-based system architectures.
- High-speed interface validation, electrical compliance testing, PCI Express, DDR5, Ethernet, SPI, I2C, I3C standards knowledge.
- Strong understanding of power integrity, power delivery, PMICs, signal integrity, and server electrical subsystems.
- Component and alternate-source qualification, Approved Vendor List (AVL) management, and end-of-life component mitigation expertise.
- NPI and production hardware lifecycle knowledge, including qualification and sustaining activities after product launch.
- Proven success investigating customer, field, factory, or production hardware failures and driving RCCA and corrective actions through validation and closure.
- Proficiency with Linux and Windows environments and Python or similar programming languages for validation automation, data analysis, or test workflows.
- Familiarity with schematic capture, board-level electrical design, FPGA-based hardware, PCB layout, and design-review processes.
Disclaimer:
Certain U.S. based or U.S. customer or client-facing roles may be required to comply with applicable requirements, such as immunization/occupational health mandates, and/or drug testing requirements.
Range and benefit information provided in this posting are specific to the stated locations only
US: Hiring Range in USD from: $114,600 to $234,600 per annum. May be eligible for bonus, equity, and compensation deferral.
Oracle maintains broad salary ranges for its roles in order to account for variations in knowledge, skills, experience, market conditions and locations, as well as reflect Oracle's differing products, industries and lines of business. Candidates are typically placed into the range based on the preceding factors as well as internal peer equity.
Oracle US offers a comprehensive benefits package which includes the following:
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance, including expert medical opinion
- Short term disability and long term disability
- Life insurance and AD&D
- Supplemental life insurance (Employee/Spouse/Child)
- Health care and dependent care Flexible Spending Accounts
- Pre-tax commuter and parking benefits
- 401(k) Savings and Investment Plan with company match
- Paid time off: Flexible Vacation is provided to all eligible employees assigned to a salaried (non-overtime eligible) position. Accrued Vacation is provided to all other employees eligible for vacation benefits. For employees working at least 35 hours per week, the vacation accrual rate is 13 days annually for the first three years of employment and 18 days annually for subsequent years of employment. Vacation accrual is prorated for employees working between 20 and 34 hours per week. Employees working fewer than 20 hours per week are not eligible for vacation.
- 11 paid holidays
- Paid sick leave: 72 hours of paid sick leave upon date of hire. Refreshes each calendar year. Unused balance will carry over each year up to a maximum cap of 112 hours.
- Paid parental leave
- Adoption assistance
- Employee Stock Purchase Plan
- Financial planning and group legal
- Voluntary benefits including auto, homeowner and pet insurance
The role will generally accept applications for at least three calendar days from the posting date or as long as the job remains posted. As part of Oracle's onboarding process and consistent with applicable law, US-based employees are required to complete identity verification, which involves the collection and processing of their biometric information. Accommodations to this requirement may be granted following an individualized assessment.
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