Staff Hardware Design Engineer

Fastly helps people stay better connected with the things they love. Fastly’s edge cloud platform enables customers to create great digital experiences quickly, securely, and reliably by processing, serving, and securing our customers’ applications as close to their end-users as possible — at the edge of the Internet. The platform is designed to take advantage of the modern internet, to be programmable, and to support agile software development. Fastly’s customers include many of the world’s most prominent companies, including GitHub, Yelp, Paramount, and JetBlue.

We're building a more trustworthy Internet. Come join us.

Posting Open Date: April 21, 2026

Anticipated Posting Close Date*: May 21, 2026

*Job posting may close early due to the volume of applicants.

 

Staff Hardware Design Engineer

As a member of the Hardware Engineering team you will be responsible for designing and implementing the hardware infrastructure which runs Fastly's stack. You and the team will work with internal teams and external vendors on the design, testing and rollout of the hardware to ensure a highly performant, available and scalable infrastructure. 

We’re looking for a talented Staff Hardware Design Engineer with experience in hardware systems, networking, and systems engineering for distributed systems that are scalable, fault-tolerant, and cost-effective. You’ll be joining a team responsible for the design of Fastly’s underlying hardware infrastructure and ensuring its stability and performance.  You’ll collaborate with the various software development teams, supply chain, operations, and external vendors/partners.  Your key insights and data will drive the architecture and implementation of Fastly’s POPs. 

What You'll Do:

• Collaborate with software engineering teams, supply chain, vendors, and other leaders or groups to evolve the Fastly hardware infrastructure based on new requirements, constraints, and/or changing technology.
• Develop specifications, RFPs, and other related requirements documentation showcasing the Fastly requirements and design principles for the overall life cycle of the platform and infrastructure.
• Play an active role in the hardware selection process by guiding vendors to understand our requirements, test early engineering samples of next-gen hardware (on and offsite).
• Identify and drive development for off the shelf, semi-custom, and custom SKUs where required from partners or vendors to maximize CAPEX efficiency/TCO while balancing system performance.
• Contribute to the hardware engineering team in the implementation of hardware, testing, firmware, and BIOS changes, including working with operations on keeping the fleet current 
• Collaborate on the testing of hardware - components and system in the lab, pre-production environment, and in production to make data driven decisions on the hardware architecture and vendors
• Work cross functionally to troubleshoot and triage hardware throughout the full life cycle of the hardware platforms
• Engage application development teams to ensure compatibility and assist in performance evaluation to meet platform requirements and expectations
• Mentor junior engineering developers, operations, and infrastructure staff
• Assist in vendor quality activities not limited to:  First Article Inspections (FAI), site audit, and root cause analysis

What We're Looking For (required): 

• 8+ years of experience with hardware system architecture and associated tradeoffs that include software, hardware, operational cost, and mechanical aspects 
• Experience collaborating with a broad range of roles, senior leadership, stakeholders and vendors/partners 
• You are obsessed with detailed and timely documentation on all aspects involved with the hardware and tooling 
• Strong foundation of management platforms and tools:  console servers, IPMI, SSH, PXE, and telemetry systems
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills for both internal and external facing situations

We’ll be super impressed if you have experience in any of these: 

• Extensive knowledge and experience of storage and memory subsystems 

Experience with firmware development, programming, bash scripting, tooling creation and maintenance

• Experience with CDN hardware and software architecture 
• Knowledge in open source operating systems, hypervisors, and orchestration frameworks
• Background in test automation
• Deep understanding of various CPU architectures

Work Hours:

• This position will require you to be available during core business hours.