AI Factory Network Architect

Runware; Oregon; Hybrid; USD 260,000 - 420,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Generous PTO

Stock options

Flexible hours

Family leave

Company retreats

Job summary

Runware is building the AI Factory—the Sonic Inference Pod network scales from NVLink server fabrics to inter-site backbones. This hands-on leadership role designs, builds, and operates a fabric spanning thousands of GPUs across continents, ensuring traffic flows at line rate with scalable, repeatable processes.

You will own the architecture, guide optical and InfiniBand strategies, and lead a growing team of network engineers for high-availability and performance.

Qualifications

• 15+ years designing, building, and operating high-performance networks (HPC/AI scale).
• Deep InfiniBand experience: fabric design, subnet management, routing, congestion control, debugging.
• Experience with NVLink/NVSwitch in multi-GPU, multi-node setups.
• Optical networking depth: 400G/800G, DWDM, coherent optics.
• Hands-on RDMA across InfiniBand and RoCE, including GPUDirect and NCCL.
• Automation and IaC using Python or Go; telemetry pipelines.
• Ability to translate designs into site-executable docs; strong writing skills.
• Willingness to travel to pod sites in US and Europe.

Responsibilities

• Own end-to-end network architecture for the AI Factory, from NVLink to pod-to-pod fabric.
• Define optical layer, link budgets, and validated, repeatable fabric designs for new pods.
• Build and bring up initial fabrics hands-on; develop runbooks for operations at scale.
• Collaborate with hardware, platform, and inference teams; guide topology decisions for throughput and latency.
• Lead capacity planning, vendor evaluations, and roadmap alignment with NVIDIA and carriers.
• Hire and lead network engineers as footprint grows; provide escalation for fabric incidents.

Skills

InfiniBand

NVLink

NVSwitch

Optical networking

RDMA

Python

Go

Telemetry pipelines

Documentation

Leadership

Tools

NVIDIA Spectrum-X

Quantum-X800

OpenFabrics

SONiC

NCCL

GPUDirect

Job description

About Runware

Runware is the AI inference platform that builds and runs its own infrastructure, end to end. Our Sonic Inference Engine has served more than 20 billion requests for over 1 million developers and 500 million end users, with 400,000+ models behind a single integration, at up to 10x lower cost per token than traditional providers. We are now building the AI Factory that runs it. The Sonic Inference Pod packs 1 MW of custom-designed compute into a 20-foot container with closed-loop, water-free cooling, sited wherever power exists. Pods are live in the US and Europe, and we are scaling to dozens of pods and tens of thousands of GPUs, all operated as one distributed fabric that reroutes traffic the moment a pod goes offline (announcement). The network is what turns those pods into a supercomputer. That is the job.

The role

As AI Factory Network Architect, you will own the network architecture of Runware's AI supercomputer, from the NVLink domain inside a server to the optical links between pods on two continents. You will set the design, build the first systems with your own hands, and grow the team that runs them. This is a hands-on leadership role, not a slide-deck role. You will specify the fabrics, validate them on real hardware, debug the first congestion collapse at 3 a.m., and then write the standard so it never happens again. You will work directly with our hardware, platform, and inference engineering teams, with NVIDIA and our optical and switching vendors, and with the site teams deploying pods. Success means inference traffic flows across tens of thousands of GPUs at line rate, pods join the fabric in days rather than weeks, and a failure anywhere in the network is invisible to the developer calling our API.

What you'll do

Own the end-to-end network architecture for the AI Factory: the scale-up fabric (NVLink and NVSwitch domains), the scale-out fabric (InfiniBand and RoCE), the storage and management networks, and the pod-to-pod and inter-site backbone. Design the optical layer: transceiver and cable selection, co-packaged and linear-drive optics evaluation, DWDM for pod-to-pod and metro links, and the link budgets and reliability targets behind them. Define the reference network design for the Sonic Inference Pod so every new pod ships with a validated, repeatable fabric and joins the global network in days. Build and bring up the first fabrics yourself: rail-optimized topologies, subnet manager and routing configuration, adaptive routing, congestion control, QoS, and GPUDirect RDMA tuning, measured against inference throughput and tail latency rather than synthetic benchmarks. Work with the inference engine team so the Sonic Inference Engine's traffic patterns, from tensor- and pipeline-parallel collectives to KV-cache transfer and multi-node serving, drive topology and buffer decisions, not the other way round. Run capacity planning and the vendor roadmap with NVIDIA, switch and optics suppliers, and carriers; negotiate technical specifications and lead evaluations of new fabric generations. Set the operating standard: telemetry, link-health monitoring, failure-domain design, automated fault isolation, and runbooks that let a small team operate tens of thousands of ports. Hire and lead a team of network engineers as the footprint grows, and act as the final technical escalation for fabric incidents across all sites.

Requirements

• 15+ years designing, building, and operating high-performance networks, with a significant part of that in HPC or AI supercomputers at the scale of thousands of GPUs or more.
• Deep, hands-on InfiniBand experience: fabric design, subnet management, routing engines, adaptive routing, congestion control, and performance debugging at the port and queue-pair level.
• Working knowledge of NVLink and NVSwitch domains and how scale-up and scale-out fabrics interact for multi-GPU and multi-node inference and training.
• Optical networking depth: transceivers and cabling at 400G and 800G, link budgets, DWDM and coherent optics for inter-site links, and the operational realities of optics at scale (failure rates, cleaning, inventory).
• Hands-on RDMA experience across InfiniBand and RoCE, including GPUDirect, NCCL and collective behaviour, PFC and ECN tuning, and the trade-offs between the two.
• A track record of leading network teams through greenfield builds and production incidents, and of being the person engineers call when the fabric is doing something nobody understands.
• Comfort automating everything: Python or Go, infrastructure as code, and telemetry pipelines rather than CLI sessions.
• Clear writing and the ability to turn a design into a document that a site team on another continent can execute from.
• Willingness to travel to pod sites in the US and Europe for bring-up and major changes.

Strong differentiators

• Experience with NVIDIA Spectrum-X, Quantum-X800, or Blackwell-generation NVLink systems, or the equivalent from a hyperscaler's in-house stack.
• Hands-on time with co-packaged optics, linear-drive pluggables, or photonic switching evaluations.
• Experience designing networks for modular or containerized data centers, edge sites, or deployments with constrained power and space.
• Background in inference-specific traffic patterns: disaggregated prefill and decode, KV-cache transfer, and multi-tenant serving across a shared fabric.
• Contributions to SONiC, OpenFabrics, UEC, or similar open networking efforts.
• Experience with sovereign or data-residency network designs, including inter-site encryption and segmentation.
• Prior work at a GPU cloud, hyperscaler, national lab, or AI lab building its own supercomputer.

Benefits

Why Runware

You will design the network for an AI supercomputer that is being built right now, with the budget, the hardware, and the mandate to do it properly. Few network architects get to own a fabric from the first pod to the global backbone, with a direct line to the people deciding what the next pod looks like.

We're a remote-first collective, meeting in person twice a year to plan, brainstorm, celebrate wins, and enjoy some face-to-face time. We have core hours for cooperative working and calls, but outside of that your calendar is yours. Work the hours that let you perform at your peak while also building a healthy life.

Our release cycles are fast and intense, but they're followed by real downtime. After big pushes we expect the team to unplug, recharge, and come back ready and stronger than ever for the next leap.

• Generous paid time off: vacation, sick days, public holidays
• Meaningful stock options: share in the upside you create
• Flexible hours: own your schedule outside core collaboration blocks
• Family leave: paid maternity, paternity, and caregiver time
• Company retreats: twice-yearly gatherings in inspiring locations