Senior Systems Engineer – Performance & Reliability

Graphcore; Bristol; On-site; GBP 70,000 - 110,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible working

Generous annual leave

Private medical insurance

Health cash plan

Dental plan

Pension (matched 5%)

Life assurance

Income protection

Parental leave

Job summary

Graphcore in Bristol, UK, is seeking a Senior Systems Engineer for Performance & Reliability. You’ll help determine whether racks of machines meet production standards by designing workloads, building experiments, and interpreting results to guide decisions.

The role blends systems engineering with measurement and judgement, with opportunities across infrastructure, workloads, and analysis. Collaboration across teams is key.

Qualifications

• Strong software engineering experience across multiple projects or systems.
• Experience in Linux-based environments, ideally with distributed or high-performance systems.
• Proficiency in Python.
• Experience with automation and CI/CD (e.g. GitLab CI, Jenkins, GitHub Actions).
• Ability to design, implement and run experiments that produce meaningful results.
• Ability to interpret results and communicate findings clearly, for decision-making.
• Comfortable working where requirements are not fully defined and judgement is needed.
• Experience with large-scale or distributed systems (clusters, cloud, HPC).
• Experience with performance, reliability, or systems-level testing/measurement.
• Familiarity with pytest or similar frameworks for structured testing.
• Experience analysing system behaviour under load (compute, network, or ML workloads).
• Experience working with containerisation, orchestration, or provisioning systems (Docker, Kubernetes, OpenStack).
• Proficiency in other programming languages (e.g. C++).
• Exposure to data analysis, statistics, or interpreting variability in results.

Responsibilities

• Expanding measurement coverage from small clusters to full racks.
• Designing workloads that expose system behaviour.
• Building systems to run experiments across large clusters.
• Interpreting results and defining what "good enough" looks like.

Skills

Software engineering

Linux environments

Python

CI/CD tooling

Experiment design

Results communication

Ambiguity tolerance

Distributed systems

Performance testing

Pytest familiarity

Load analysis

Container orchestration

Other languages

Data analysis

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

OpenStack

Job description

Senior Systems Engineer – Performance & Reliability

Bristol, UK

About Graphcore

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. To meet the vast and exciting AI opportunity, Graphcore is expanding its teams around the world. We are bringing together the brightest minds to solve the toughest problems, in a place where everyone has the opportunity to make an impact on the company, our products and the future of artificial intelligence.

Job Summary

We decide whether entire racks of machines are good enough to enter production. Our team measures and evaluates large‑scale Linux systems—from a single rack to data‑centre scale. We don’t just run benchmarks; we determine whether a system behaves correctly, and whether it is reliable enough to be trusted. The work spans designing workloads, building execution systems, and interpreting results. A measurement is only useful if it leads to a decision. You won’t be confined to a narrow role. Some engineers here focus on infrastructure, others on workloads or analysis—but everyone contributes to understanding system behaviour at scale. You are free to specialise, but as a team we are responsible for leaving no gaps.

You might find yourself:

• Expanding measurement coverage from small clusters to full racks
• Designing workloads that expose system behaviour
• Building systems to run experiments across large clusters
• Interpreting results and defining what "good enough" looks like

This is not a pure infrastructure or data role. The work combines systems engineering, measurement, and judgement. We’re looking for engineers who are comfortable working where the right answer isn’t obvious, and where careful measurement matters more than output volume.

Selection criteria

Our engineers typically bring significant practical experience and sound engineering judgement. Depth in one area is valued, but the ability to work across boundaries is equally important.

• Strong software engineering experience, typically gained across multiple projects or systems over several years
• Experience working in Linux‑based environments, ideally with distributed or high‑performance systems
• Proficiency in Python
• Experience with automation and CI/CD systems (e.g. GitLab CI, Jenkins, GitHub Actions)
• Ability to design, implement, and run experiments or tests that produce meaningful results
• Ability to interpret results and communicate findings clearly, with an emphasis on accuracy and usefulness to decision‑making
• Comfortable working in areas where requirements are not fully defined and judgement is required
• Experience working with large‑scale or distributed systems (e.g. clusters, cloud platforms, HPC environments)
• Experience with performance, reliability, or systems‑level testing/measurement
• Familiarity with pytest or similar frameworks for structured test/measurement execution
• Experience analysing system behaviour under load (compute, network, or ML workloads)
• Experience working with containerisation, orchestration, or provisioning systems (e.g. Docker, Kubernetes, OpenStack)
• Proficiency in other application programming languages (e.g. C++)
• Exposure to data analysis, statistics, or interpreting variability in results

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.