Director, Network Capacity Automation

Lambda Inc.; Washington; Hybrid; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Cash & equity compensation

Health, dental, and vision coverage

Wellness and commuter stipends

401k plan with company match

Flexible PTO

Job summary

Lambda is seeking a Director of Network Capacity Automation to lead teams building software that enables proactive capacity planning for our global GPU cloud infrastructure. You will own end-to-end capacity delivery, hire and shape a high-performing team, and partner with leaders across Interconnect, Infrastructure, and Product to forecast demand.

You will drive a multi-year strategy for capacity automation, translate ambitious goals into executable plans, and ensure an automation-first approach

Qualifications

• 8+ years of engineering management experience, including direct management of senior ICs.
• Proven track record building and scaling engineering orgs delivering high-performance cloud connectivity.
• Software engineering background with production systems experience and architectural literacy.
• Data-driven, automation-first mindset to accelerate delivery velocity.
• Experience designing, building, scaling and operating large-scale networks.
• Familiarity with distributed systems and large-scale networking services.
• Ability to translate ambiguous business goals into clear engineering plans.
• Strong judgment on when to go deep technically or delegate.
• Track record of delivering projects in fast-paced, high-pressure environments.

Responsibilities

• Own network capacity end-to-end: planning, delivery, turn-up and lifecycle.
• Build and lead the organization: hire, develop and retain engineers and leaders.
• Set multi-year technical strategy for capacity automation.
• Automate manual processes; create a durable capacity pipeline.
• Own the operational bar: planning, reviews, shipping, metrics, post-incident learning.
• Manage through leads and senior ICs with regular feedback and growth planning.
• Partner with Interconnect to coordinate external connectivity.
• Collaborate with principal engineers to maintain high engineering standards.
• Align capacity roadmaps with Infrastructure, Supply Chain, Data Center, Product and Finance.
• Represent work to senior leadership and customers as appropriate.
• Contribute to org-wide engineering process improvements.

Skills

Engineering management

Building and scaling teams

Software engineering background

Automation mindset

Large-scale networking

Distributed systems

Strategic planning

People leadership

Cross-functional collaboration

Job description

Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, is a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers. Our customers range from AI researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers. Lambda's mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give everyone the power of superintelligence. One person, one GPU.

If you'd like to build the world's best AI cloud, join us.

*Note: This position requires presence in our Bellevue or San Francisco office location 4 days per week; Lambda’s designated work from home day is currently Tuesday.

Lambda, The Superintelligence Cloud, is a leader in AI cloud infrastructure serving tens of thousands of customers. Our customers range from AI researchers to enterprises and hyperscalers. Lambda's mission is to make compute as ubiquitous as electricity and give everyone the power of superintelligence. One person, one GPU.

Our vision is bold and is not an incremental exercise. We will continually re-evaluate and reinvent our current ways of working and the automation underneath all of it, while operating the existing network flawlessly for all customer workloads.

Lambda has 10x'd over the last three years, and the network engineering organization is scaling to match. We're looking for a Director of Network Capacity Automation to lead one or more teams building the software that enables us to plan and deliver network capacity ahead of customer demand. This capacity is critical to ensure a flawless customer connectivity experience to our GPU cloud infrastructure. We're looking for a Director to own that outcome end to end — and to build the organization that delivers it. You'll hire and grow a talented team of software and network proficient engineers, shape team culture, and partner with technical leadership to deliver the mechanisms needed to stay ahead of our scale ambitions.

This role will report to the VP of Cloud and AI Networking, working alongside a highly capable and passionate team of engineers.

If you'd like to join a great team of customer obsessed engineers building the world's best AI cloud, come join us.

What You'll Do

• Own network capacity end to end — planning, delivery, turn-up and lifecycle — and be accountable for capacity landing ahead of demand

• Build and lead the organization that delivers it: hire, develop and retain engineers and the leaders who manage them, and design the team structure as the org grows

• Set the multi-year technical strategy for capacity automation to ensure it continually scales

• Convert manual process into durable software — the goal is a capacity pipeline that runs without heroics, not a better-organised set of runbooks

• Own the operational bar for your org: how capacity work is planned, reviewed, shipped, measured and learned from when it goes wrong

• Manage through leads and senior ICs, developing both — regular 1:1s, clear performance feedback, growth planning, and sponsorship of meaningful work

• Partner and support our Interconnect team who negotiate, acquire and coordinate on external connectivity

• Partner with Principal Engineers and technical leadership to maintain a high engineering bar across design, code quality and operational reliability

• Partner with Infrastructure, Supply Chain, Data Center Operations, Product and Finance to align capacity roadmaps, forecast demand and manage long-lead dependencies

• Represent your org's work and technical direction to senior leadership, and to enterprise customers and partners where appropriate

• Contribute to org-wide engineering process improvements — how we plan, how we ship, how we learn from incidents

You

• Have 8+ years of engineering management experience, including directly managing senior individual contributors

• Proven track record of building and scaling engineering organizations that deliver mission-critical, high-performance cloud connectivity serving millions of users

• Have a software engineering background — you've shipped production systems and can engage credibly on architecture, technical tradeoffs, and code quality

• Foster a data driven, automation first, high velocity organization

• Familiarity designing, building, scaling and operating large-scale networks

• Familiarity with how to build distributed systems and large-scale networking services

• Strong automation skills and track record accelerating a business delivery velocity on a large scale

• Have a track record of building high-performing teams in fast-moving, technically demanding environments

• Are skilled at translating ambiguous business and product goals into clear team priorities and executable engineering plans

• Show strong judgment about when to go deep technically, when to delegate, and when to escape

• Track record of successful project and product delivery in fast-paced, high-pressure environments

• Excellent communicator both written and verbal. You leverage high quality written artifacts to inform high quality decision making and get approval on problems and solution opportunities

Nice to Have

• Experience in GPU cloud, HPC, or AI/ML infrastructure environments

• Deep familiarity with large-scale data center or cloud networking — fabric build-out, capacity modelling, or network supply chain

• Experience with infrastructure capacity forecasting and long-lead hardware planning

• Prior experience at a high-growth infrastructure or cloud company

Salary Range Information

The annual salary range for this position has been set based on market data and other factors. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description.

About Lambda

• Founded in 2012, with 500+ employees, and growing fast

• Our investors notably include TWG Global, US Innovative Technology Fund (USIT), Andra Capital, SGW, Andrej Karpathy, ARK Invest, Fincadia Advisors, G Squared, In-Q-Tel (IQT), KHK & Partners, NVIDIA, Pegatron, Supermicro, Wistron, Wiwynn, Gradient Ventures, Mercato Partners, SVB, 1517, and Crescent Cove

• We have research papers accepted at top machine learning and graphics conferences, including NeurIPS, ICCV, SIGGRAPH, and TOG

• Our values are publicly available: https://lambda.ai/careers

• We offer generous cash & equity compensation

• Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents

• Wellness and commuter stipends for select roles

• 401k Plan with 2% company match (USA employees)

• Flexible paid time off plan that we all actually use

Equal Opportunity Employer

Lambda is an Equal Opportunity employer. Applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, age, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation and identity, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship, or any other factors prohibited by local, state, or federal law.