Sr. Principal Hardware Engineer - Santa Clara, CA - Hybrid

Gigamon, recently certified as a Great Place to Work, helps the world's leading organizations run fast, stay secure, and innovate. We provide the industry's first elastic visibility and analytics fabric, which closes the cloud visibility gap by enabling cloud tools to see the network and network tools to see the cloud. With visibility across their hybrid cloud network, organizations can enhance the customer experience, eliminate security blind spots, and reduce costs and complexity. Gigamon has been awarded over 90 technology patents and enjoys world-class customer satisfaction, serving more than 4,000 organizations, including over 80 percent of the Fortune 100 companies and hundreds of governments and educational institutions worldwide.

Gigamon is seeking an experienced Senior Principal Hardware Engineer to lead the development of advanced hardware platforms for high-performance networking and datacenter applications. This role combines strategic technology leadership with hands-on circuit design and system-level engineering. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in networking hardware, a deep understanding of datacenter infrastructure requirements, and a passion for building scalable, reliable systems.

Key Responsibilities:

• Define and drive hardware system architecture for next-generation networking and datacenter platforms, including routers, switches, and interconnect systems.

• Develop detailed system-level design specifications aligned with product and technology roadmaps.

• Influence and guide strategic silicon, optics, and interconnect technology selection and adoption.

• Create comprehensive hardware functional specifications and interface definitions.

• Lead component selection and qualification for networking and datacenter use cases, ensuring scalability, performance, and cost-effectiveness.

• Perform board-level digital circuit design using OrCAD or similar EDA tools; lead board bring-up, debug, and system validation.

• Collaborate with Product Management, Software/Firmware Engineering, Mechanical Design, and Operations teams across the full product lifecycle.

• Evaluate and qualify optical technologies (e.g., transceivers, AOCs, DACs, splitters) for use in datacenter interconnects.

• Design and support both new and existing hardware platforms, with a focus on performance, thermal efficiency, and regulatory compliance.

• Lead environmental, EMI/EMC, and safety compliance testing; manage certification processes and provide customer support for compliance-related inquiries.

Required Qualifications:

• BS in Electrical Engineering or related discipline (MS preferred).

• 15+ years of experience designing embedded systems or hardware platforms for networking/datacenter infrastructure.

• Extensive experience in high-speed digital board design (10G-400G+, SerDes, PCIe, DDRx, etc.).

• Strong knowledge of power architecture and design for high-efficiency, low-noise on-board power systems.

• Experience integrating and validating FPGAs, SoCs, and programmable logic in networking systems.

• Skilled in board-level debug and validation using oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, and high-speed test equipment.

• Strong understanding of datacenter networking technologies and protocols, including Ethernet, optical networking, and switch fabric design.

• Demonstrated ability to write clear technical specifications, test plans, and validation reports.

• Proven track record of cross-functional collaboration across hardware, software, and operations/manufacturing teams.

• Strong organizational and analytical skills with the ability to manage multiple complex programs simultaneously.

Preferred/Bonus Skills:

• Experience with scripting for test automation and board bring-up (Tera Term, Shell, Python).

• Familiarity with compliance and certification processes relevant to networking/datacenter products (e.g., NEBS, CE, FCC, RoHS).

• Exposure to hyperscale datacenter requirements or working directly with cloud service providers (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google Cloud).

The base salary compensation range targeted for this role based out of Gigamon's Santa Clara, CA, Headquarters office is $190,500 - $275,000, with an opportunity to earn an annual bonus or commission (subject to the plan's terms and conditions). This salary range is an estimate, and the actual salary may vary based on the Company's compensation practices.