Hardware Project Manager – AI Data Center

About the Company

DriveNets is a leader in large-scale networking solutions for AI infrastructure and service providers. The company’s disaggregated networking architecture transforms the economics of large-scale infrastructures while maximizing performance, utilization, and operational efficiency. Its high-performance AI fabric maximizes GPU utilization and accelerates deployments by optimizing the AI stack end-to-end, resulting in higher tokens-per-second and lower cost-per-token. DriveNets’ solutions power production networks for global tier-1 operators like AT&T and Comcast, and scale multi-vendor AI infrastructures at foundation model labs, NeoClouds, and enterprises.

Responsibilities and Duties

• Join a new, fast-growing group at DriveNets chartered with building hardware infrastructure for AI-scale data centers.
• Own hardware programs end-to-end: from initial requirements through validation, production, and deployment.
• Manage the interaction between internal R&D teams and external hardware vendors (ODMs), ensuring hardware development aligns with DriveNets' software stack requirements and product timelines.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product management, systems architecture, software R&D, legal, and supply chain teams to align on requirements and execution plans.
• Serve as the main technical point of contact with ODMs, managing technical discussions, tracking progress, and resolving issues.
• Drive hardware and firmware planning, including schedule alignment with software integration cycles and overall AI data center rollout milestones.
• Lead bug triage and resolution processes for hardware and firmware, including customer-reported issues.
• Coordinate content and timelines for hardware and firmware releases, ensuring quality and timely delivery.
• Identify and mitigate technical and schedule risks throughout the project lifecycle.
• Provide technical guidance and hands-on engagement in board-level design issues, validation planning, hardware bring-up, and debugging.
• Deliver regular status updates to executive stakeholders and drive decisions at critical project milestones.
• Gather and communicate requirements in a collaborative manner across all stakeholders.

Technical Skills

• B.Sc. or higher in Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
• 7+ years of experience in hardware program/project management or systems engineering roles.
• Proven experience managing hardware development with external ODMs or hardware vendors.
• Strong technical knowledge of networking hardware, high-speed board design, firmware, and hardware/software integration.
• Experience with hardware validation, bring-up, and debugging tools.
• Track record managing the full product lifecycle for hardware- and software-based products, from requirements to launch.
• Working knowledge of project management methodologies (Agile and Waterfall).

Soft Skills

• Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, with the ability to align engineering, product, legal, and supply chain teams around a shared plan.
• Excellent communication and negotiation skills, including the ability to translate technical hardware issues into business impact for executive stakeholders.
• Proactive and comfortable operating with ambiguity, with the initiative to help stand up a new group and its processes from the ground up.

Nice to Have / Advantage

• Experience in the telecom or networking industry.
• Background in AI infrastructure, data center, or GPU networking hardware.
• Familiarity with whitebox hardware development models.
• Experience in Agile or hybrid hardware-software development environments.
• Experience with customer-facing issue management and escalation handling.
• PMP certification or equivalent project management credential.
• Exposure to DevOps practices and tooling.