Senior Platform Architect

Axelera AI; Amsterdam; Remote; EUR 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Pension plan

Employee insurances

Stock options

Job summary

Axelera AI is seeking a Senior Platform Architect to own platform-level architecture for datacenter AI accelerator systems, spanning server to large-scale deployment. You will translate top-level requirements into concrete hardware specifications and drive system topology, host integration, and memory organization.

You will lead collaboration across AIIS, silicon, product, and software teams, interfacing with customers and ecosystem partners to align architecture decisions and ensure scalable,

Qualifications

• 5+ years of system, platform, or hardware architecture experience, with server/rack scale exposure.
• Deep understanding of scale-up and scale-out design and interconnect fabrics.
• Ability to map workloads to hardware architecture and quantify end-to-end performance impact.
• Proven leadership and cross-functional collaboration across multidisciplinary teams.

Responsibilities

• Define platform-level architecture for datacenter AI accelerator systems from server to deployment.
• Translate compute/memory/interconnect requirements into hardware specs.
• Specify interconnects and power budgeting at the hardware level (PCIe, CXL).
• Define host/storage/network integration and system topology for scalable clusters.
• Ensure operability, reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) across designs.
• Lead architecture work, coordinating with AIIS, silicon, product, software, and customers.

Skills

Platform architecture

Server and rack design

Interconnect/fabric design

Hardware-software collaboration

Leadership and collaboration

RAS concepts

AI/HPC accelerator systems (bonus)

Tools

PCIe

CXL

Ethernet

Job description

About Us

Axelera AI is not your regular deep-tech startup. We are creating the next-generation AI platform to support anyone who wants to help advancing humanity and improve the world around us.

In just four years, we have raised a total of $370 million and have built a world-class team of 220+ employees (including 49+ PhDs with more than 40,000 citations), both remotely from 18 different countries and with offices in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, the UK, headquartered at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

We have also launched our Metis™ AI Platform, which achieves a 3-5x increase in efficiency and performance, and have visibility into a strong business pipeline exceeding $100 million.

Our unwavering commitment to innovation has firmly established us as a global industry pioneer.

Are you up for the challenge?

Position Overview

We are looking for a Senior Platform Architect to own the platform-level architecture for our datacenter AI accelerator systems — from server through rack integration and, eventually, full datacenter deployment.

The role sits within the System Architecture team, and marks our expansion from edge AI into the datacenter. You’ll take compute, memory, and connectivity requirements defined by the broader System Architecture team and translate them into architectural requirements on our hardware platforms. You own how accelerators are composed into systems to execute workloads effectively, defining system topology, host integration, memory organization and platform-level requirements to achieve performance, scalability and operability.

The role is primarily in close collaboration with the AI Infrastructure Systems (AIIS) division that builds our board- and system-level products, as well as with the silicon and software divisions. Finally, you will be engaged with strategic customers and ecosystem partners on architecture requirements and technical alignment.

Key responsibilities:

• Define the platform-level architecture for our datacenter AI accelerator systems, spanning server board design, rack integration, and datacenter-level deployment.
• Translate system-level compute, memory, and interconnect requirements — defined in collaboration with the broader System Architecture team and product division — into concrete hardware platform specifications.
• Specify physical interconnect infrastructure — defining the architectural requirements and trade-offs that the AI Infrastructure Systems division executes against, including how interconnect characteristics impact system-level workload performance.
• Define host, storage and networking integration and organization at the hardware level, covering PCIe and CXL, as well as system-level power budgeting.
• Ensure scaled-up and scaled-out designs sustain target performance as systems grow from single nodes to large clusters.
• Define operability and RAS (reliability, availability, serviceability) requirements across redundancy architecture, hot-swap capability, telemetry and management interfaces (BMC/IPMI/Redfish), and fault containment to ensure platforms are manageable and dependable in production.
• Take a leading technical role in the system architecture team, interfacing directly with key partners and internal stakeholders to align architecture decisions, including the AI Infrastructure Systems division, silicon, product management, software, and customers, system integrators and ecosystem partners on architecture requirements — with commercial engagement and design ownership sitting with the AIIS Director.
• Drive methodology and best practices for platform-level design as the team scales.

Qualifications:

• Experience: Significant experience (5+ years) in system, platform, or hardware architecture, with a strong track record at server and/or rack scale.
• Core knowledge: Scale-up and scale-out system design, distributed workload mapping, functional partitioning, and interconnect/fabric architecture.
• Fabrics & interconnect: Deep, hands-on understanding of Ethernet, UALink, optical, and switched-fabric technologies, and the ability to reason about their system-level performance trade-offs.
• Systems thinking: Ability to connect workload characteristics to hardware architecture and to quantify the impact of design choices on end-to-end performance.
• Leadership and collaboration: Demonstrated ability to lead and collaborate across multidisciplinary teams and to interface effectively with partners and senior stakeholders.
• Bonus: Experience architecting AI/HPC accelerator systems, familiarity with distributed training/inference workloads, and exposure to data-center-scale deployment.
• Strong problem-solving skills, a collaborative mindset, and a passion for building systems at scale.

Location

We offer a flexible working arrangement, with options to:

• Work from one of our Axelera AI offices (Leuven in Belgium, Amsterdam and Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Zurich in Switzerland, Florence and Milan in Italy or Bristol in the United Kingdom) if you're already based in the vicinity.
• Work fully remotely from any European country (incl. the UK) you are already in.
• Relocate with us and work from Italy (Florence or Milan) or the Netherlands (Amsterdam or Eindhoven).

Kindly note that priority will be given to candidates who are [interested in being] based in Belgium or Italy.

What weoffer

This is your chance to shape and be part of a dynamic, fast-growing, international organization. We offer an attractive compensation package, including a pension plan, extensive employee insurances and the option to get company shares.

An open culture that supports creativity and continual innovation is awaiting you. Collaborative ownership and freedom with responsibility is characteristic for the way we act and work as a team.

At Axelera AI, we wholeheartedly embrace equal opportunity and hold diversity in the highest regard. Our steadfast commitment is to cultivate a warm and inclusive environment that empowers and celebrates every member of our team. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds to join us in shaping the future of AI.