Network Engineer, Connectivity & Strategy

Fluidstack; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 162,000 - 202,000; Full time

Job summary

Fluidstack in Austin is building civilization-scale infrastructure for AI by owning and operating a global network of data centers and connectivity. We seek an autonomous professional to own external connectivity, plan backbone capacity, and negotiate terms with carriers and fiber providers.

You will help ensure diversity, low latency, and cost efficiency across our fleet. Join a team that moves with insane urgency and solves frontier problems, delivering high-performance networks for AI

Qualifications

• You've engineered carrier and long-haul connectivity at scale.
• You've procured dark fiber and lit services and know where the contracts hide risk.
• You plan capacity with data and buy ahead of need.
• You hold carriers to SLAs with escalation paths you built yourself.

Responsibilities

• Own external connectivity: carriers, dark fiber, internet exchanges, and cloud interconnects across the fleet.
• Plan backbone capacity between sites years ahead of the traffic that will fill it.
• Negotiate technical terms with carriers and fiber providers alongside sourcing.
• Own the connectivity roadmap: diversity, latency, and cost engineered deliberately.

Skills

Carrier connectivity at scale

Dark fiber procurement

Long-haul & subsea systems

DWDM

Peering strategy

SLA management

Job description

About Fluidstack

We exist to make humanity more free. For most of human history, you farmed or you starved. Technology gave people more time for the things they wanted to do, instead of things they had to do. Powerful AI will be the biggest lever for human choice we've ever built - but only if models are aligned with what humanity actually wants. There are groups building AI who don't share these goals. Whoever deploys frontier compute infrastructure fastest will decide whether AI expands human freedom or shrinks it.

About Fluidstack

We exist to make humanity more free. For most of human history, you farmed or you starved. Technology gave people more time for the things they wanted to do, instead of things they had to do. Powerful AI will be the biggest lever for human choice we've ever built - but only if models are aligned with what humanity actually wants. There are groups building AI who don't share these goals. Whoever deploys frontier compute infrastructure fastest will decide whether AI expands human freedom or shrinks it.

We're singularly focused on delivering 10 to 100s of GWs of compute faster than anyone else, rethinking every layer of the stack. We acquire power, design and build data centers, and operate them - with teams spanning hardware and software. Speed and scale are our key differentiators. Come be a part of building civilization-scale infrastructure for AI.

We hire people who care deeply about this problem space.

How We Operate

• Be a barrel. Full autonomy. Own things end to end, take on scope without being asked, no permission required to operate outside your core role.
• Insane urgency. We drive everything forward as fast as possible.
• Reason from first principles. Challenge every assumption. Zero analogy thinking, no egos, the best idea wins.
• Love of the game. The frontier of AI is the most interesting problem of our time. We put in long hours at high intensity to push the frontier forward.
• Build something that actually matters. If you're going to spend your time, spend it on something that matters to the world.

Examples of key problems the team is working on

• Build the networks the frontier of AI trains on. Fabrics for 100k+ accelerator clusters, backbones between gigawatt campuses, and every network in between.
• Run 10s to 100s of GWs of networks as one machine. Training fabrics for 100k+ accelerators, backbone, corp, and BMS/EPMS, one architecture across gigawatt campuses.
• Deliver a full site network in days, not quarters. Designs generated from source-of-truth models, devices turned up by ZTP, every link validated by machine. At this scale, manual is an outage.

Role Scope

• Own external connectivity: carriers, dark fiber, internet exchanges, and cloud interconnects across the fleet.
• Plan backbone capacity between sites years ahead of the traffic that will fill it.
• Negotiate technical terms with carriers and fiber providers alongside sourcing.
• Own the connectivity roadmap: diversity, latency, and cost engineered deliberately.

What We're Looking For

• The below is a starting point. We always make space for exceptional people, so if you don't fit this role exactly, tell us where you would.
• You've engineered carrier and long-haul connectivity at scale.
• You've procured dark fiber and lit services and know where the contracts hide risk.
• You plan capacity with data and buy ahead of need.You hold carriers to SLAs with escalation paths you built yourself.
• Bonus: Long-haul and subsea systems. DWDM. Peering strategy. Fiber route analysis.

We are committed to pay equity and transparency.

Fluidstack is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and protected veterans' status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Fluidstack will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records pursuant to applicable law.

Compensation Range: $162K - $202K