Senior Ai Systems Administrator

Commonai C.I.C.; Cambourne; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension

Professional development

Networking opportunities

Vibrant Cambridge-area office

Job summary

CommonAI CIC is seeking a Senior AI Systems Administrator to join our engineering team. You will provision and maintain multi-rack GPU server clusters designed for both inference and training workloads.

This role is perfect for a hands-on engineer who thrives on the intersection of cutting-edge hardware and software orchestration. You will be given access to cutting edge AI tooling and we encourage our employees to explore the latest technology to drive innovative workflows and scalable systems.

Qualifications

• Significant experience as System Administrator, HPC Engineer, MLOps Engineer or similar role.
• Experience with GPU server deployment, tuning and management.
• Strong networking skills including Infiniband, RDMA, RoCE.
• Advanced Linux and hypervisor/VM environments with multiple distros.
• Git and IaC tools such as Terraform/OpenTofu.
• Solid understanding of network design and security.
• Collaborative approach to optimise systems with users and stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Provision and maintain multi-rack GPU server clusters for inference and training.
• Collaborate with researchers and engineers to optimize performance and reliability.
• Implement and manage infrastructure using IaC and version control.
• Schedule maintenance windows and support during UK business hours.

Skills

GPU server management

Linux system admin

Infiniband networking

Terraform

OpenTofu

Git versioning

Scripting Python

Network design

Tools

Slurm

LSF

Ceph

Lustre

Job description

CommonAI CIC is a non-profit membership organisation, founded on a belief in collaborative engineering for the safe and responsible development of foundational AI technologies. A place where AI startups, enterprises large and small, public sector bodies and academia can share resources and knowledge, to codevelop and grow businesses, fast.

We are led by experienced founders, investors and engineers who believe that collaborative engineering drives faster AI innovation and are backed by a mix of UK Government and private funding in order to design, build and deploy innovative AI systems.

The Opportunity

We are seeking a highly skilled Senior AI Systems Administrator to join our rapidly growing engineering team. You will provision and maintain multi-rack GPU server clusters designed for both inference and training workloads. This role is perfect for a hands-on engineer who thrives on the intersection of cutting-edge high-end hardware and complex software orchestration.

You will be given access to cutting edge AI tooling and we encourage our employees to make full use of the latest technology to find innovative and new ways of working.

Requirements

You should be able to demonstrate:

• Significant experience working as a System Administrator, HPC Engineer, MLOps Engineer or equivalent technical role
• Modern GPU server deployment, tuning and management
• Advanced networking technologies (Infiniband, RDMA, RoCE)
• Advanced Linux skills and experience working with servers running hypervisors/VMs and multiple distributions (e.g. Ubuntu, RHEL)
• Expertise in source code management (e.g. Git) and infrastructure-as-code tools (e.g. Terraform, OpenTofu)
• A strong understanding of network design and switch/router/firewall configuration
• The desire to work collaboratively with users and other stakeholders to iteratively optimise systems

Experience with any or all of the following will also be highly valued:

• High-performance or high-availability storage servers/clusters (Lustre, Ceph, Weka, PEAK:AIO)
• HPC workload managers (Slurm, LSF)
• Proficiency in scripting (e.g. Python)
  

Our infrastructure is used for research and development. Support will generally only be required during UK business hours however major maintenance may occasionally be scheduled for weekends.

Benefits

• A collaborative and supportive work environment
• The opportunity to have a high impact in a growing organisation
• Competitive salary package, including pension and benefits
• Professional development opportunities
• Networking opportunities with influential figures from across the tech sector and academia
• A vibrant office environment located a few minutes' walk away from Cambridge train station

CommonAI CIC is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to creating an inclusive and diverse workplace.