Principal Hardware Engineer
15 days ago
Southampton
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