Senior Hardware Validation Engineer

NVIDIA is hiring a Senior Hardware Validation Engineer in Santa Clara, United States. It pays $168k-$259k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on NVIDIA.

Level's read on this job

Little AI ●○○○ is how Level rates this role: aI is not part of the work.
Level classes it as a senior role.
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AI in this role

Our technology has no boundaries! NVIDIA is building the world’s most groundbreaking and state of the art compute platforms for the world to use. It’s because of our work that scientists, researchers and engineers can advance their ideas. At its core, our visual computing technology not only enables an amazing computing experience, but it is also energy efficient! We pioneered a supercharged form of computing loved by the most demanding computer users in the world - scientists, designers, artists, and gamers. It’s not just technology though! It is our people, some of the brightest in the world, and our diverse company culture make NVIDIA one of the most fun, innovative and dynamic places to work in the world! At the center of NVIDIA's culture are our core values like innovation, excellence and determination and team, that guide us to be the best we can be.

We are looking for a Senior Hardware Validation Engineer to lead validation activities in the Datacenter Systems Engineering team. You'll work closely with validation engineers, board designers, silicon characterization, and AE teams to ensure product validation and test coverage are optimal. The ideal candidate is self motivated, works well with different teams, very comfortable in a lab environment and demonstrates passion towards product level validation. They should have strong debug/circuit analysis fundamentals as well as automation and scripting experience. They must be capable of thriving in fast paced environment with evolving product definitions.

What you’ll be doing:

Own validation coverage, technical risk, issue prioritization, and release-readiness recommendations from initial board bring-up through system integration and production release.
Independently debug complex electrical, functional, performance, and reliability issues. Define experiments, collect evidence, isolate root causes, verify corrective actions, and establish regression coverage.
Validate power delivery, tune system power-management control loops, and verify high- and low-speed interfaces such as PCIe, I2C, SPI, SMBus, and USB.
Lead multi-functional investigations involving board bring up, silicon, firmware stack, thermal, mechanical, and manufacturing teams, driving issues to verified closure.
Review schematics and PCB layouts, provide actionable design feedback, and influence next-generation products based on validation findings.
Develop diagnostics, automation, and data-analysis tools that improve validation coverage, reproducibility, and root-cause efficiency.

What we need to see:

BSEE/BSCE or equivalent experience
5+ years of validation experience
Strong understanding of digital design, circuit design and analysis, computer architecture and CPU/GPU architecture.
Validation experience with board bringup, lab debug and lab tools (oscilloscopes, multimeters, logic analyzers).
Excellent design, debugging and problem-solving skills, with a strong bias for action, quality and engineering excellence.
Strong Linux experience, including command-line debugging, system log analysis, and developing diagnostic and test-automation tools using Python, Shell, Perl, or similar scripting languages
Experience with ARM CPU architecture and hardware validation.

Ways to stand out from the crowd:

Validation and root-cause experience with GPU, CPU, SoC, or accelerated-computing platforms as well as deep knowledge of power electronics, power transistors, control systems, PID tuning, power monitoring, or rail-sequencing analysis.
Experience taking datacenter hardware from early bring-up through server, rack, and production deployment.
Understanding of rack-level power, cooling, networking, storage, cabling, and system-topology interactions.
Experience debugging intermittent, workload-dependent, thermal, performance, or scale-related failures that cross multiple engineering domains.
A track record of leading complex investigations involving design, silicon, firmware, software, thermal, manufacturing, suppliers, or ODM teams.

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and other objective job-related factors. The expected base salary range for this position is 168,000 USD – 258,750 USD.

You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until November 3, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.

How we rate this

Senior Hardware Validation Engineer at NVIDIA rates 27 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Little AI. AI is not part of the work.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.