# Hardware Systems Architect

**Company:** [Anthropic](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/anthropic)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA, New York, NY, Seattle, WA
**Role:** Hardware Engineering
**Salary:** $320k – $485k/yr
**Experience:** 8+ years
**Skills:** hardware systems architecture, interconnect, power delivery, thermal engineering, mechanical engineering, Networking, pcie/cxl, ethernet, InfiniBand, optical interconnect, bmc, secure boot, liquid cooling, reliability engineering, signal integrity
**Posted:** 2026-08-05

> Architects large-scale hardware systems for frontier AI compute, spanning interconnect, power, thermal, mechanical, and reliability domains from requirements through production deployment. The role requires deep expertise in at least one hardware-systems discipline, vendor leadership, and 8+ years of relevant experience preferred.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities

- Own system path-finding and architecture across Anthropic’s compute deployments, from concept and requirements through specification, design review, and deployment.
- Write and own high-level system, board, interface, and rack requirements and specifications.
- Review partner and vendor designs, make build, buy, and co-design decisions, and identify misalignment or schedule risks.
- Drive interconnect and networking architecture for scale-up and scale-out fabrics, NICs, switches, optics, and topology.
- Drive board, chassis, and system architecture, including component placement, PCB architecture, connector and cable design, and power and thermal budgets.
- Develop performance simulations, hardware models, and what-if scenarios to evaluate hardware architectures.
- Define validation, bring-up, and qualification strategies, including fleet telemetry and reliability targets.
- Track technology roadmaps and vendor landscapes.
- Partner with ML performance, infrastructure software, supply chain, datacenter, and hardware vendor teams.
- Develop AI-assisted approaches to design, specification review, and validation.

## Requirements

- Deep, hands-on expertise in at least one core hardware-systems domain, such as interconnect, power, or thermal engineering, for large-scale compute or networking systems.
- Experience owning hardware system architecture at machine, rack, row, and cluster scale.
- Experience authoring specifications and requirements.
- Experience taking hardware from architecture through bring-up and high-volume production deployment.
- Experience working with external hardware vendors and partners and reviewing their designs against specifications.
- Ability to reason about trade-offs across interconnect, power, thermal, and mechanical domains.
- Track record of technical leadership and ownership of directional decisions.
- Ability to drive alignment across teams and partners.
- Comfort operating autonomously in a fast-moving, ambiguous environment.
- Strong written communication skills.
- Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, or a related field, or equivalent experience.

## Nice-to-haves

- 8+ years in hardware systems architecture or engineering for hyperscale, HPC, AI/ML, or high-end networking platforms.
- Experience with AI accelerator systems, including GPU, TPU, or custom ASIC platforms, and their scale-up and scale-out fabrics.
- Familiarity with chip-package-system interfaces and co-design.
- Experience establishing a new function, program, or engineering practice.
- Experience using AI tools in engineering workflows.
- Expertise in high-speed SerDes, PCIe/CXL, Ethernet/InfiniBand, optical interconnect, BMC and platform firmware, hardware root of trust, secure boot, 48V/HVDC power delivery, direct liquid cooling, fleet-scale reliability engineering, RAS architecture, signal integrity, or power integrity.

## Representative Projects

- Define scale-up and scale-out interconnect architecture for next-generation training platforms.
- Architect management and control planes, including BMC and host control, power and reset sequencing, secure boot, attestation, and fleet telemetry.
- Own rack-level power and thermal architecture for liquid-cooled accelerator racks.
- Build reliability models and RAS strategies for multi-thousand-node fleets.
- Evaluate partner system designs against requirements and drive corrective changes.
- Prototype AI-assisted workflows for partner design review and specification consistency checking.

## Compensation and Benefits

- Annual salary range: **$320,000–$485,000 USD**.
- Anthropic expects staff in an office at least 25% of the time under its location-based hybrid policy.
- Visa sponsorship is available for eligible roles and candidates.

## Similar roles

- [Actuator Design Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/470edead-aa5b-4fdd-9eb6-249302c5f15c) - OpenAI - San Francisco, CA - $342k – $445k/yr
- [Lead Thermal Simulation Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/148e5fca-dd93-4bcf-87ff-aea9ec1db65a) - OpenAI - San Francisco, CA - $342k – $445k/yr
- [Electrical Engineer, Robotics](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/9dfc22a1-ddc4-4fe6-9795-ddc4d8d822c4) - OpenAI - San Francisco, CA - $295k – $380k/yr
- [AV Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/48d75acb-4785-42bc-a1c3-db78d2714d75) - Anthropic - New York, NY - $285k – $325k/yr
- [Mechanical Lead, R&D](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/6df969f7-d93d-4331-a3b7-3e1b8b94093c) - Fluidstack - Austin, TX - $284k – $340k/yr

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/5df718b3-12b3-42a0-9e93-f739b025344c
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/5df718b3-12b3-42a0-9e93-f739b025344c