Director of Engineering - AI Integrated Systems

Senior Engineering Director – AI Integrated Systems
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About Us
Axelera AI is not your regular deep‑tech startup. We are creating the next‑generation AI platform to support anyone who wants to help advance humanity and improve the world around us. In just four years, we have raised a total of $120 million and built a world‑class team of 220+ employees, including 49+ PhDs with more than 40,000 citations, remotely from 17 different countries and with offices in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, the UK, headquartered at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

We have launched our Metis™ AI Platform, which achieves a 3‑5× increase in efficiency and performance, and have a strong business pipeline exceeding $100 million. Our unwavering commitment to innovation has firmly established us as a global industry pioneer. Are you up for the challenge?

Position Overview
We’re looking for a hands‑on, strategic engineering leader to take ownership of our in‑house hardware and lead the full hardware development organization responsible for designing our cards and system‑level AI solutions built around the company’s accelerator chips. This role is deeply rooted in hardware engineering excellence—owning schematic design oversight, power delivery architecture, high‑speed board design, PCB layout quality, SI/PI methodologies, validation strategy, and the overall technical integrity of our products.

You will partner closely with the Director of AI Integrated Systems, who drives product development strategy, and the technical roadmap prioritisation. Your focus will be on engineering execution and technical leadership required to deliver high‑performance, reliable, manufacturable hardware platforms.

Key Responsibilities

Serve as the technical authority for all hardware designs, guiding architecture, schematics, PCB stack‑ups, high‑speed routing, power delivery, SI/PI, thermal and mechanical engineering.

Own end‑to‑end hardware execution—from design reviews and bring‑up to validation, reliability testing, DFM/DFT/DFR and mass‑production readiness.

Oversee all hardware development activities in partnership with the Hardware R&D Manager, ensuring technical robustness, compliance, and performance across all products.

Define and enforce engineering processes, documentation standards, validation methodologies, and quality gates across the organisation.

Identify and mitigate technical risks, resolve engineering escalations, and drive debugging and root‑cause analysis during development and early production.

Partner with product technical leaders to ensure strong product requirements, architectural clarity, and lean, manufacturable design execution.

Occasionally lead project technical execution when needed.

Lead and mentor an experienced engineering organisation, ensuring clear roles, accountability, and growth paths for senior technical talent.

Align hardware execution with system integration, silicon, SDK/software, supply chain, productisation, and operations.

Partner with the division Director to translate product development strategy into actionable engineering plans, schedules, and development priorities.

Qualifications

15+ years in hardware engineering for complex electronics products and 5+ years in senior leadership roles.

Experience with embedded compute, firmware or board‑bring‑up; familiarity with structured NPI processes.

Experience with high‑speed interfaces, power delivery/VRM, PCB layout in high density, thermal/mechanical design, simulations and product validation/compliance.

Proven track record of delivering hardware designs into volume production.

Hands‑on ability to review schematics, layouts, simulations, and lab validation data.

Experience with AI accelerators is a plus.

Experience with server‑level engineering is a plus.

Leadership experience across multidisciplinary teams.

Strong strategic thinker, excellent communicator and skilled at decision‑making in fast‑moving environments.

Location
We offer a flexible working arrangement with options to:

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