Principal Architect, AI Networking

NVIDIA; Town of Texas (WI); On-site; USD 272,000 - 431,250; Full time

Job summary

NVIDIA in the Town of Texas, Wisconsin, is seeking a Senior Technical Leader to establish the long-term vision for distributed AI communication systems. The role requires 15+ years in systems software, expertise in high-performance networking, and a graduate degree in a relevant field. The position offers a competitive salary range of 272,000 USD - 431,250 USD, along with equity and benefits. NVIDIA values diversity and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer.

Qualifications

• 15+ years in systems software and networking with expertise in high-performance networking and GPU systems.
• Deep understanding of computer architecture, memory hierarchies, and OS-level networking.
• Experience in ML systems concepts, programming languages including C, C++, Rust, Python.

Responsibilities

• Set the long-term technical vision for distributed AI communication systems.
• Conduct original research on next-generation networking solutions.
• Drive hardware-software co-optimization and investigate bottlenecks in communication systems.
• Publish findings and mentor engineers across the organization.

Skills

High-performance networking

Communication libraries

Programming in C, C++, Rust, and Python

ML systems concepts

Education

MS, PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or related field

Job description

An applied research team within NVIDIA's Networking Systems & Software Architecture group is solving some of AI's hardest infrastructure problems. The team builds systems-level software that moves data between GPUs, nodes, and storage at the speed modern AI demands-spanning low-level transport optimization, hardware-software co-design, and communication frameworks that plug directly into production AI stacks. The team's charter expands into emerging domains including quantum computing interconnects.

What You Will Be Doing

• Setting the long-term technical vision for distributed AI communication systems - GPU-to-GPU, GPU-to-storage, and cross-node data movement.
• Conducting original research and prototyping next-generation networking solutions over RDMA, NVLink, and GPUDirect.
• Driving hardware-software co-optimization with GPU, DPU, NIC, and network switch. Investigating fundamental bottlenecks in communication runtimes for large-scale AI workloads (KV cache transfer, disaggregated prefill/decode, model parallelism).
• Integrating networking capabilities into AI serving stacks such as vLLM, SGLang, and TensorRT-LLM.
• Publishing findings, representing NVIDIA in industry forums and standards bodies, and mentoring senior engineers across the organization.

What We Need To See

• 15+ years in systems software and/or networking with deep expertise in high-performance networking (InfiniBand, RoCE, RDMA, NVLink), communication libraries (e.g. NIXL, NCCL, UCX, MPI, NVSHMEM), and GPU accelerated systems, with track record of defining and delivering complex, cross-team technical initiatives from research concept to production.
• MS, PhD or equivalent experience in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field.
• Deep understanding of computer architecture, memory hierarchies, DMA engines, and OS-level networking.
• Understanding of ML systems concepts - transformer architectures, KV cache mechanics, model parallelism, or distributed training and inference patterns.
• Proficiency in programming languages such as C, C++, Rust and Python.

Ways To Stand Out From The Crowd

• Knowledge of ML inference frameworks (vLLM, SGLang, TensorRT-LLM) and their communication requirements.
• CUDA programming and NVIDIA GPU architecture expertise.
• Proved experience influencing product strategy and technical roadmap at a senior level.
• Major open-source contributions.

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions. The base salary range is 272,000 USD - 431,250 USD. You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering a diverse work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.