Principal Network Engineer — AI/HPC Networking Lead

AI Startups UK; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Base + equity

Job summary

Nscale is hiring a Principal Network Engineer to lead the architecture and operation of our AI- optimised network infrastructure. You will set direction for low-latency, high-bandwidth networks across data centres, mentoring engineers and guiding complex decisions across Deployment, Data Centre Operations, Platform Engineering, Systems, and vendors.

The role blends hands-on engineering with broad architectural influence, emphasizing automation, observability, and scalable security for

Qualifications

• 10+ years of network engineering experience in HPC/AI/hyperscale data centres.
• Extensive hands-on experience with RDMA-aware networking (InfiniBand and/or RoCE).
• Experience with subnet managers and fabric orchestration (OpenSM, NVIDIA UFM).
• Strong control-plane knowledge: BGP, EVPN-VXLAN, Clos architectures.
• Production experience with network platforms (Cumulus, Nokia, Arista).
• Strong network automation using Python and Ansible.

Responsibilities

• Define, design, validate, and evolve large-scale InfiniBand, RoCE, and Ethernet fabric architectures across data centre scales.
• Lead network automation strategy using a GitOps operating model and develop provisioning tooling.
• Own security, edge infrastructure, and reliability across AI/HPC networking environments.
• Mentor engineers and drive architectural decisions and incidents spanning multiple teams.

Skills

Network engineering

HPC/AI networks

InfiniBand/RoCE

BGP EVPN VXLAN

Networking automation

Python & Ansible

Git-based workflows

CI/CD tooling

Firewall architectures

Observability/telemetry

Tools

OpenSM

NVIDIA UFM

Terraform

GitLab CI

Job description

Nscale is hiring a Principal Network Engineer to lead the architecture and operation of our AI- optimised network infrastructure. You will set direction for low-latency, high-bandwidth networks across data centres, mentoring engineers and guiding complex decisions across Deployment, Data Centre Operations, Platform Engineering, Systems, and vendors.

The role blends hands-on engineering with broad architectural influence, emphasizing automation, observability, and scalable security for