Senior Engineer Cloud Development

Graphcore; Bristol; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading AI compute company is seeking a Senior Engineer to join their Cloud Development Team in Bristol. This role involves developing and deploying services on cutting-edge AI systems, cloud infrastructure, and performance optimization. Candidates should have solid IT experience, strong Linux scripting abilities, and familiarity with Infrastructure-as-Code. The position offers a competitive salary, flexible working conditions, and comprehensive benefits including private medical insurance and generous parental leave.

Benefits

Flexible working

Annual leave

Private medical insurance

Health cash plan

Dental plan

Pension matched up to 5%

Employee assistance programme

Qualifications

• Strong proven Linux scripting ability required.
• Solid infrastructure or IT experience with a proven track record.
• Experience in AGILE and SCRUM framework.

Responsibilities

• Develop end-user services on private clouds.
• Build automation for metrics collection and analysis.
• Maintain and operate fleet of AI systems.

Skills

Linux scripting (bash and python)

Linux system administration (Ubuntu, RHEL)

Infrastructure-as-Code (IAC)

Version control with Git

Continuous Integration using GitLab or GitHub

Container deployment (Docker)

APIs and virtual networks

Monitoring solutions (Grafana, Prometheus)

Education

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience

Tools

Terraform/OpenTofu

Ansible

Kubernetes

Job description

Overview

At Graphcore, we’re building the future of AI compute. We’re a team of semiconductor, software and AI experts, with deep experience in creating the complete AI compute stack – from silicon and software to infrastructure at datacenter scale. As part of the SoftBank Group, backed by significant long‑term investment, we are delivering key technology into the fast‑growing SoftBank AI ecosystem.

Job Summary

We are looking for a Senior Engineer to join our Cloud Development Team and help develop and deploy services. Working closely with our colleagues in Platform Engineering, Datacentre Operations and Product Development teams, you will deploy services on our fleet of cutting‑edge AI systems. As part of our Platform Engineering organisation, you will be involved in cloud integration, validation, performance benchmarking, optimisation, and development of our high‑performance AI solutions. These include in‑house AI systems alongside off‑the‑shelf high‑performance servers, switches and storage solutions. This is a hand‑on role requiring a solid background in cloud infrastructure, deployment using Infrastructure‑as‑Code, observability, high‑performance networking and storage systems. You may have been working in an IT organisation, a datacentre, a cloud provider or as a developer of orchestration or cloud services.

Platform Engineering Team at Graphcore

We build Graphcore products into large‑scale AI solutions for our customers and the Cloud Development Team is responsible for providing such systems to both internal users via private clouds and customers via our own public cloud services. Often the internal systems will be using and developing pre‑release hardware and software, so it’s vital you are comfortable with unproven components.

Responsibilities and Duties

• Develop and operate end‑user services on our private clouds and support internal users in their use. You will turn end‑user and product requirements into deployed services.
• Help to build automation to collect and analyse metrics and other observability data from the cloud services to support clear identification and reporting of any issues. Work with users to provide information of any product‑related issues to Engineering and QA departments.
• Work with our Datacentre Operations Engineers to maintain and operate the fleet of AI systems at peak performance in our private clouds.
• Operate and extend existing OpenStack‑based cloud services and contribute to the deployment and development of new ones.
• Configure and test new Graphcore AI hardware and systems using Continuous Deployment and Infrastructure‑as‑Code in internal and external datacentres.
• Drive corrective actions for systems that are not operating correctly, working with DC operations and Graphcore Engineering as required.
• Work with external vendors of off‑the‑shelf switches, servers and storage solutions to specify, benchmark and integrate third‑party products into our Cloud Reference Design.

Skills and Experience [ALL REQUIRED]

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in a relevant subject.
• Solid infrastructure or IT experience with a proven track record of delivering technical output as an individual contributor.
• Experience specifying, scoping, estimating and detailing work plans in an AGILE and SCRUM framework, including priorities, risks, issues, impacts and constraints.
• Strong proven Linux scripting ability (bash and python required).
• Strong proven Linux system administration (Ubuntu, RHEL and variants).
• Experience with a version control system (preferably Git) and using it to manage system configuration or automation.
• Experience with Continuous Integration or testing pipelines using GitLab, GitHub or similar.
• Hands‑on experience deploying services into public or private clouds using Infrastructure‑as‑Code (IAC).
• A solid understanding of the technologies underpinning cloud services (APIs, virtualisation of CPUs, IO, systems), virtual networks, block storage, resource management and monitoring.
• Experience with IAC automation tools (e.g. Terraform/OpenTofu, Ansible, Packer).
• Experience with container deployment and management tools (e.g. Docker).
• Experience with solutions for monitoring and observability (e.g. Grafana, Prometheus, OpenSearch/ElasticSearch, Loki, Mimir, OpenTelemetry, Fluentd, Kafka).
• Good communication and presentation skills, and experience dealing with end‑users of IT or cloud services.
• An ability to work independently on critical infrastructure without oversight, and with a focus on end‑user availability.

Desirable but not required

• Experience with OpenStack deployments or the technologies they rely on (e.g. Ceph, Open vSwitch, KVM, QEMU).
• Strong skillset and experience in HPC networking and virtualised RDMA NICs.
• Strong skillset and experience in end‑to‑end deployment automation and CI of containerised services – complete automation of pipelines for build, test, deploy, manage, alert, destroy, rebuild.
• Experience with managing production Kubernetes clusters and workloads.
• Experience with workload queue management systems (SLURM, LSF, Kueue).
• Experience with managed switch configuration (e.g. EOS, SONiC, DNOS).
• Programming experience with Python3 utilising classes and inheritance.
• Programming experience with Go.

Benefits

In addition to a competitive salary, Graphcore offers flexible working, a generous annual leave policy, private medical insurance and health cash plan, a dental plan, pension (matched up to 5%), life assurance and income protection. We have a generous parental leave policy and an employee assistance programme (which includes health, mental wellbeing and bereavement support). We offer a range of healthy food and snacks at our central Bristol office and have our own barista bar! We welcome people of different backgrounds and experiences; we’re committed to building an inclusive work environment that makes Graphcore a great home for everyone. We offer an equal opportunity process and understand that there are visible and invisible differences in all of us. We can provide a flexible approach to interview and encourage you to chat to us if you require any reasonable adjustments.

Sponsorship

Applicants for this position must hold the right to work in the UK. Unfortunately at this time, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship or support for visa applications.

Equal Opportunity

Graphcore is an equal opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to fostering an inclusive environment where all employees feel respected and valued.