Principal Mechanical Engineer

Key Responsibilities
Design and Development:
-Independently designs and develops electronic parts, components, board layout and board planning, mechanical systems, equipment, and packaging, ensuring reliability, performance, and manufacturability.
-Contributes to setting thermal cooling strategies and designs mechanical architecture for server generations, from feasibility studies to production.
-Utilizes advanced computer assisted design (CAD) tools (e.g., ProE, SolidWorks) to develop 3D models and detailed mechanical designs, collaborating with cross-functional teams to refine solutions.
-Contributes to the mechanical design of electronics enclosures or embedded systems, ensuring alignment with hardware systems and design requirements.
Structural and Reliability Analysis:
-Reviews the results of stress analysis, strain analysis, and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to evaluate the mechanical strength and reliability of materials and components, addressing challenges independently.
-Identifies and addresses potential points of failure, conducting root cause and corrective action analysis to refine designs and improve reliability.
Manufacturing and Production Support:
-Ensures that designs are manufacturable within cost and quality constraints, working closely with Operations and External Manufacturers to support the transition from prototype to production.
-Guides the design development process, ensuring alignment with project timelines and collaborating across teams to optimize manufacturing processes.
Product Testing and Quality Assurance:
-Conducts reliability assessments of materials and designs, ensuring products meet company standards.
-Oversees prototype build and testing processes, ensuring designs meet functional and performance goals while identifying areas for improvement.
-Analyzes test data to detect bugs, defects, and failure trends.
Research and Innovation:
-Researches and implements next-generation technologies to optimize data center and cloud application products.
-Evaluates and integrates new materials, processes, and mechanical design techniques, contributing to continuous innovation and product improvement.
Collaboration with Cross-functional Teams:
-Collaborates with electrical engineers, component engineers, operations teams, and other internal stakeholders to contribute to design optimizations that enhance product performance, reliability, and manufacturability.
-Engages with suppliers to develop high-quality components and assemblies, ensuring they meet performance and cost goals.
-Works with manufacturing to transition designs to production.
Project Management:
-Manages the mechanical design aspects of engineering projects in coordination with program schedule requirements.
-Begins to coordinate resources, timelines, and design reviews for their portion of the project to ensure successful delivery.
-Maintains detailed documentation of design processes and decisions, providing clear communication to stakeholders and ensuring alignment with project objectives and schedule.

Additional Responsibilities (as needed)
Thermal Management:
-Conducts detailed thermal analysis and design using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tools like FloTHERM or Icepak, ensuring optimal thermal management for electronic devices.
-Develops and executes airflow measurements, environmental testing, and thermal validation tests for products, ensuring compliance with internal and external standards (e.g., ASHRAE Data Center Standards) and correlation with simulation results.
Environmental Test Engineering:
-Leads efforts to ensure mechanical product designs meet global regulatory and industry standards by independently managing standards activities throughout the development lifecycle.
-Oversees environmental testing, collaborating with internal teams or third-party labs to ensure designs fully comply with required standards.
-Leads communication with design engineers and program managers to align test results and issues, providing guidance on how to address constraints in product development.

 

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering or a related technical field; advanced degree is a plus.

• 8+ years of hands-on mechanical design experience, or equivalent depth, with enterprise server, storage, networking, rack infrastructure, or other complex electro-mechanical products.

• Expert CAD capability with Creo/ProEngineer, SolidWorks, NX, or similar mechanical design platforms, including complex assemblies and production drawing release.

• Deep experience designing sheet metal, machined, plastic, die-cast, fastened, and integrated electro-mechanical components and assemblies.

• Strong working knowledge of manufacturing processes, including stamping, bending, machining, injection molding, die casting, finishing, assembly, inspection, tooling feedback, and supplier qualification.

• Proven ability to lead tolerance strategy, GD&T, DFM/DFA, mechanical drawings, BOM creation, design documentation, engineering change processes, and manufacturing release discipline.

• Experience leading prototype builds, mechanical validation, environmental testing, vibration testing, thermal characterization, failure analysis, and production readiness activities.

• Ability to lead cross-functional teams through ambiguous mechanical, thermal, manufacturability, rack integration, serviceability, cost, and schedule tradeoffs.

• Strong technical judgment, ownership, communication, mentoring, documentation, and schedule-management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading mechanical development for cloud infrastructure, hyperscale data center hardware, enterprise servers, storage systems, networking systems, or rack-level platforms.

• Working knowledge of thermal and structural analysis workflows and tools such as FloTHERM, Icepak, ANSYS, or similar simulation environments.

• Strong background in environmental, vibration, shock, thermal, reliability, and qualification testing for high-volume hardware products.

• Familiarity with EMI/EMC, safety, regulatory, reliability, serviceability, and data center environmental requirements.

• Prior leadership with global ODM/JDM partners, external manufacturers, tooling vendors, and supply chain organizations is a plus.

• Knowledge of high-power systems, airflow optimization, liquid-cooling interfaces, rack integration, cable routing, packaging density constraints, and service-access requirements.

• Experience with PLM/PDM systems and formal release processes for high-volume hardware products.

Core Technical Skills

• Mechanical architecture: Server, storage, networking, rack-level, airflow, thermal-interface, serviceability, and electro-mechanical system integration.

• Technical leadership: Design direction, requirements definition, tradeoff decisions, design review leadership, issue escalation, and mentoring of junior engineers.

• Manufacturing execution: DFM/DFA leadership, tooling strategy, supplier engagement, cost optimization, quality improvement, and production transfer.

• Validation closure: Test strategy, qualification planning, tolerance and structural risk assessment, environmental testing, thermal characterization, and RCCA leadership.

• Documentation discipline: CAD models, drawings, BOMs, ECOs, PLM records, specifications, assembly procedures, validation evidence, and production release records.