Infrastructure Operations Engineer

Lightning-Ai; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 200,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental and vision coverage (U

Pension contribution

Generous paid time off

Paid parental leave

Wellness stipend

Flexible work environment

Job summary

Lightning AI is seeking an experienced Infrastructure Operations Engineer to scale and operate our AI infrastructure platform. You will own reliability, automation, and incident response for large-scale GPU environments, partnering with Infrastructure Engineering, Network Operations and Software Platform teams to improve efficiency and robustness.

This role is based in one of our hubs (NYC, SF, Seattle, or London) with at least two in-office days per week.

Qualifications

• 8+ years Linux server/hosting experience, Ubuntu a bonus.
• 5+ years AWS experience.
• 2+ years Kubernetes experience and container fundamentals.
• 2+ years Terraform and Ansible experience.
• 2+ years NAS management (NFS/Ceph)
• Experience with monitoring systems (Prometheus/ELK).
• Familiarity with GitOps workflow.
• Automation programming in Python/Go/Bash for system integration.
• Strong networking fundamentals, including data center networks.
• Experience delivering complex systems and balancing design, risk, cost and outcomes.
• Excellent written and verbal communication.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and roll out platforms to minimize incidents and enable features.
• Deploy updates to support internal and end-user use cases.
• Collaborate with Infra Eng, Network Ops, Customer Success and Software/Platform teams.
• Participate in on-call rotation with primary/secondary scheduling.

Skills

Linux server administration

AWS

Networking fundamentals

Python/Go scripting

Communication skills

Cloud infrastructure design

Tools

Kubernetes

Terraform

Ansible

Prometheus/ELK

GitOps workflow

NFS/Ceph storage

Job description

London, England, United Kingdom; New York, New York, United States; San Francisco, California, United States; Seattle, Washington, United States

Who We Are

Lightning AI is the company behind PyTorch Lightning. Founded in 2019, we build an end‑to‑end platform for developing, training, and deploying AI systems—designed to take ideas from research to production with less friction.

Through our merger with Voltage Park, a neocloud and AI Factory, Lightning AI combines developer‑first software with cost‑efficient, large‑scale compute. Teams get the tools they need for experimentation, training, and production inference, with security, observability, and control built in.

We serve solo researchers, startups, and large enterprises. Lightning AI operates globally with offices in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and London, and is backed by Coatue, Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Firstminute.

What We're Looking For

Lightning AI is seeking an experienced Infrastructure Operations Engineers to help scale and operate our next‑generation AI infrastructure platform. Our InfraOps team sits at the center of reliability, automation, and operational scale for GPU infrastructure. This team owns break/fix operations, incident response, customer provisioning, observability, and the automation systems that keep complex infrastructure running efficiently.

In this role, you’ll work hands‑on with large‑scale GPU environments, Linux systems, bare metal infrastructure, provisioning workflows, and platform reliability. You’ll partner closely with Infrastructure Engineering, Network Operations, and Software Platform teams to troubleshoot issues, improve operational efficiency, and build automation that reduces manual toil over time.

This role is based in one of our hubs (NYC, SF, Seattle, or London), with a minimum of 2 in‑office days per week and occasional team and company offsites. We are not able to provide visa sponsorship for this position at this time.

What You’ll Do

• At the direction of the Manager of Infrastructure Operations, design, build, and roll out new platforms and patterns to minimize incidents and enable customer‑facing and internal features.
• Deploy updates and improvements to support both Voltage Park’s internal and end‑customer use cases.
• Collaborate with colleagues in Infrastructure Engineering, Network Operations, Customer Success and Software and Platform Development Teams.
• Participate in the on‑call rotation which is evenly distributed across all team members in a primary/secondary pattern where you are primary then move to a secondary position.

What You Will Need

Required Qualifications

• 8+ years working with Linux as a server/hosting platform, extra points for Ubuntu experience.
• 5+ years experience with AWS.
• 2+ years experience with Kubernetes and strong container fundamentals.
• 2+ years experience with Terraform and Ansible.
• 2+ years with network attached storage management (via NFS, Ceph, or other protocols). Extra points for experience with VAST storage systems.
• Experience with monitoring systems (Prometheus, ELK stack).
• Familiarity with the gitops workflow.
• Software development experience using Python, Go, bash, or other languages for the purposes of automation & connecting systems & APIs together.
• Deep networking fundamentals, extra points for experience with datacenter level networks, 400Gb Ethernet, and Infiniband.
• Experience building and delivering complex systems.
• Effective at navigating tradeoffs between design, risk, cost, and outcomes.
• Comfortable with navigating ambiguity.
• Strong written and oral communication.

Nice‑to‑Haves

• Experience with bare metal hardware troubleshooting and provisioning, extra points for working with Dell hardware.
• Experience with GPU servers, both in bare metal form or under virtualization.
• Deep experience with network switches, routers, and firewalls, particularly SONiC switches, Palo Alto firewalls and Juniper Networks as vendors.
• Experience with VAST storage systems.

Compensation

We are committed to offering competitive compensation that reflects the value each team member brings to our mission. Final offers are based on factors such as experience, skills, geographic location, and role expectations. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package for eligible roles includes a discretionary bonus, a meaningful equity component, and comprehensive benefits.

The anticipated annual base salary range for this role is:

$160,000 - $200,000 USD

Benefits and Perks

We offer a comprehensive and competitive benefits package designed to support our employees’ health, well‑being, and long‑term success. Benefits may vary by location, team, and role.

Benefits include:

• Comprehensive medical, dental and vision coverage (U.S.); Private medical and dental insurance (U.K.)
• Retirement and financial wellness support (U.S.); Pension contribution (U.K.)
• Generous paid time off, plus holidays
• Paid parental leave
• Wellness and work‑from‑home stipends
• Flexible work environment

At Lightning AI, we are committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace. We believe that diverse teams drive innovation and create better products. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic. We are dedicated to building a culture where everyone can thrive and contribute to their fullest potential.