Director, Mechanical Engineering

Role Overview

Oracle Hardware Design (OHD), within Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), develops AI, server, storage, and edge networking platforms. Onsite at Oracle’s Santa Clara, California campus.

Responsibilities

Job Summary

Build and lead the mechanical and thermal engineering organization within OHD. Develop managers and technical leaders, set organization structure, and allocate capacity and investment across the portfolio. Own mechanical and thermal delivery from concept through qualification and production ramp, accountable for performance, reliability, serviceability, and cost.

Lead mechanical, thermal, industrial design, and human factors specialists through clear standards and delegated ownership. Resolve cross-program tradeoffs with electrical, SI/PI, power, firmware/software, quality, program, datacenter, and fleet/service teams and technology/OEM/ODM partners; shape next-generation roadmaps while meeting current commitments.

Key Responsibilities

Mechanical and Thermal Technical Leadership

• Own mechanical and thermal architecture and execution for GPU/accelerator platforms, servers, storage enclosures, QSFP/OSFP optics modules, and rack-level solutions.
• Set standards for structural integrity, shock/vibration, materials, tolerances, DFM/DFA, access, acoustics, serviceability, and safety/ESD/EMC; resolve architectural tradeoffs.
• Meet reliability and risk targets through FMEA (Failure Modes and Effects Analysis) and applicable system/component MTTF (Mean Time to Failure) requirements.
• Own thermal targets and analysis methods for liquid and air cooling, including CFD, characterization, airflow, heatsinks/cold plates, optics cooling, pressure drop, and design margins.
• Direct industrial design and human factors work to meet usability, serviceability, and compliance requirements.

Portfolio Execution and Design Governance

• Set review standards and owners through concept, architecture, requirements, EVT/DVT/PVT, qualification, production readiness, and sustaining. Resolve dependencies across programs.
• Set environmental, reliability, acoustic, thermal, usability, and serviceability validation expectations; require complete evidence and verified issue closure.
• Present commitments, capacity, cost, risks, and recommended decisions to executives; escalate material gaps with recovery plans.
• Set lifecycle sign-off criteria, delegated authority, and escalation paths for performance, cost, schedule, reliability, serviceability, and supply risk.
• Align interfaces, constraints, design margins, and qualification with engineering and operations; work with safety and EMC teams on compliance and certification.

Supplier and Manufacturing Leadership

• Set supplier and OEM/ODM requirements for interfaces, manufacturability, and lifecycle support. With sourcing and operations, resolve cost, quality, and lead-time tradeoffs; use scorecards to track delivery, responsiveness, and corrective-action closure.
• Resolve component and cooling decisions with material architectural, reliability, cost, or supply implications; set approval standards and delegate routine decisions to qualified leaders.
• Lead mechanical and thermal readiness for manufacturing with Supply Chain and Operations, including production ramp, yield improvement, and sustaining.
• Oversee mechanical/thermal labs and machine-shop operations. Assign safety and throughput owners, assess capability gaps, and prioritize equipment investments against portfolio needs.

People Leadership and Organizational Scaling

• Hire, coach, and manage engineering managers and technical leaders. Define responsibilities, develop successors, and address leadership gaps before they constrain delivery.
• Maintain capacity and skills plans across concurrent programs; set resource allocations and hiring and investment priorities. Hold leaders accountable for quality and delivery.

Required Qualifications

• BS in Mechanical Engineering (or equivalent); MS preferred.

• 12+ years in mechanical, thermal, or platform engineering, including delivery of complex compute, server, storage, or networking hardware.

• 5+ years of people leadership, including managing managers.

• Record of shipping multiple high-volume platforms through EVT/DVT/PVT, qualification, and ramp, with responsibility for gate reviews and executive readiness.

• Technical depth and judgment to set standards, assess architecture decisions, and lead specialists across both disciplines: Mechanical architecture: materials, tolerance/stack-up, DFM/DFA, structural integrity, shock, and vibration, acoustics, reliability. Thermal architecture (liquid and air cooling): CFD-to-lab correlation and margining.

• OEM/ODM and supplier leadership covering requirements, interfaces, cost/quality/lead-time tradeoffs, and escalations.

• Portfolio management through capacity planning, metrics, risk reviews, design governance, and cross-functional decisions.

• Experience with industry-standard CAD, CFD, and PLM tools, including mechanical design workflows, thermal analysis, and configuration control.

• Executive communication that makes commitments, tradeoffs, risks, and recommended decisions clear.

• Mechanical architecture: materials, tolerance/stack-up, DFM/DFA, structural integrity, shock, and vibration, acoustics, reliability.

• Thermal architecture (liquid and air cooling): CFD-to-lab correlation and margining.

Application Instructions

Apply directly on Oracle Careers at Director, Mechanical Engineering↗.