Principal Hardware Engineer
Principal Hardware Engineer
Senior, hands-on role responsible for the physical delivery and lifecycle management of infrastructure across data centres, build labs, and office environments.
This position combines deep technical expertise with on-site leadership, risk ownership, and accountability for engineering standards in critical environments.
What you'll be doing
- Leading physical build, installation, relocation, and decommissioning of servers, storage, and network hardware
- Owning rack layouts, structured cabling, patching, labelling, and cable management standards
- Coordinating power, cooling, and space planning with facilities and design teams
- Producing and maintaining RAMS and operating within formal Change Management processes
- Identifying operational risks and enforcing health and safety standards
- Acting as senior technical authority and escalation point for physical infrastructure
- Mentoring field engineers and allocating work based on capability and project needs
- Supporting data centre migrations, expansions, and refresh programmes
What you'll need
- 5+ years' experience in data centre operations or infrastructure engineering
- Strong knowledge of compute, storage, and networking hardware
- Solid understanding of data centre best practice
- Experience working to RAMS in critical environments
- Structured cabling knowledge (Cat6/6a, OM3/OM4, fibre)
- Working knowledge of power distribution, PDUs, and load balancing
- Proven experience operating as a senior or lead engineer
Practical requirements
- Clean manual driving licence and valid passport
- Able to pass BS7858 vetting
- Eligible for UK SC clearance (5 years UK residency)
- Willing to travel and work out of hours when required