Hardware Systems Engineer Contractor position

Job Description

Job Description

Hardware Systems Engineer

● Number of Vacancies: 1

● Location: Austin, hybrid

● Tenure: 1-year

About The Department

Cloudflare’s Infrastructure group is responsible for building our global network. Our Hardware Engineering team helps research, develop, test, and deploy new equipment enabling 20% of the world’s internet traffic to be served smoothly. Deployed across 330 cities in 120+ countries, the hardware we select helps improve the security, reliability, and performance of the Internet.

About The Role

We need to make thoughtful infrastructure choices affecting a significant portion of the Internet. Hardware we work with includes servers and components, as well as PDUs and network hardware. As a Hardware Systems Engineer, you will work with colleagues on the Engineering teams, Product and Performance Optimization teams, and Hardware Sourcing teams to design, qualify and maintain Cloudflare’s worldwide fleet of servers

What You'll Do

● Coordinate activities and information flow with Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) partners as well as internal cross-functional teams, including Network Engineering, Infrastructure Operations, Supply Chain, and Software Engineering.

● Work with cross-functional teams at Cloudflare to gather requirements for next generation of servers

● Review server hardware design (electrical, mechanical and thermal) from ODM partners

● Perform accurate and timely data entry and maintenance of lab hardware assets, and configurations within our hardware inventory and data center infrastructure management (DCIM) tools for hardware lab deployments

● Prepare documentations related to server hardware design requirements, architecture, BOM, lifecycle management and troubleshooting guide.

● Participate in process improvement initiatives related to hardware systems reliability and hardware asset data management.

● Create, track, and update JIRA tickets for hardware-related tasks, issues, and projects, ensuring clear communication and timely resolution.

● Learn and adhere to Cloudflare's operational procedures and best practices for hardware management.

Required Skills, Knowledge And Experience

● Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Computer Science

● 2-5 years experience with compute design engineering, validation, performance benchmarking, debugging, and deployment used in the data center

● Knowledge and experience with server hardware including motherboard designs, CPU architecture, memory & storage technology

● Knowledge of bash, python and basic Linux task automation

● Curiosity and desire to learn about the Cloudflare hardware and products used by 20% of all web sites

● Desire to learn how a diverse server fleet is managed at scale with tools such as traffic management, capacity planning and failover mechanisms

● Desire to learn the tools Cloudflare uses to maintain and monitor our hardware

Not Required but Desirable Skills

● Master’s degree in Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Computer Science

● Experience of working with external vendors on server hardware qualification.

● Experience of observability and monitoring tools such as Prometheus and Grafana, as well as the ability to observe trends over time

● Experience with software development tools and processes such as Git, TeamCity and Jira

● Experience in a hyperscale cloud infrastructure role also valuable

● Knowledge of debugging server hardware faults and the ability to engage with our sourcing team and vendors to improve quality