Principal/Staff HPC Network Engineer

San Francisco Compute Company; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 200,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Visa Sponsorships

401(k) matching

Medical, dental & vision

Job summary

San Francisco Compute is seeking an experienced Infrastructure Architect to design, deploy, and operate GPU clusters worldwide. You will lead networking strategy, implement zero-touch provisioning, and automate complex data-center deployments.

You will mentor engineers and work closely with customers to tailor solutions. The role requires 10+ years in GPU cluster networks, strong RoCEv2/InfiniBand knowledge, and a willingness to be on-site in San Francisco 3–4 days a week.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of hands-on management or architecture experience with at least one GPU cluster
• Deep understanding of Ethernet-based HPC networks (RoCEv2) and InfiniBand in CLOS/fat-tree topologies
• Experience building HPC network architectures (eBGP, fat-tree, VXLAN, MCLAG)
• Interest in zero-touch provisioning and automation for large multi-layer networks
• Strong documentation skills and ability to mentor junior engineers
• Willingness to work in SF office 3–4 days per week

Responsibilities

• Architect and deploy GPU clusters globally, ensuring reliability and scalability
• Participate in on-call rotations and troubleshoot network issues
• Drive automation to enable scalable deployments across data centers
• Mentor junior engineers and influence team culture and practices
• Collaborate with customers and internal teams to design custom regional cluster solutions

Skills

Networking architecture

RoCEv2 / InfiniBand

HPC networks

Automation

Documentation

Mentoring

SF office on-site

Tools

KVM

QEMU

libvirt

Kubernetes

Linux

Job description

About San Francisco Compute

San Francisco Compute exists to give ambitious teams large scale supercomputers without taking on a catastrophic balance sheet risk. Most GPU clouds force you to sign long term contracts with no way out. If you underbuy, you miss the window. If you overbuy, you’ll blow up with no way out. It’s a desperate gamble that San Francisco Compute does not force you to play.

About San Francisco Compute

San Francisco Compute exists to give ambitious teams large scale supercomputers without taking on a catastrophic balance sheet risk. Most GPU clouds force you to sign long term contracts with no way out. If you underbuy, you miss the window. If you overbuy, you’ll blow up with no way out. It’s a desperate gamble that San Francisco Compute does not force you to play.

Originally, SFC was an AI lab that bought too big of a GPU cluster and was forced to sublease it or go under. Today, we build data centers and supercomputers, then lease those machines on contracts that let our customers sublease. More than anyone else in the industry, we deeply felt the pain and fear of being forced to bet the farm with your neocloud vendor. To enable subleasing, we invented the first compute market and became the first to offer physical settlement. That means we operate GPU clusters like a neocloud and derisk our customers like a market.

Customers buying GPU clusters don’t want to work through a network of brokers. They want to transact with the folks that have the keys to the cluster and can own the SLA.

To keep the industry safe from unnecessary risk, SFC needs to scale fast. To do that, we serve financially motivated parties as a technical partner to build, operate, & lease supercomputers on their behalf. Basically, we help folks who want an economic return build GPU clusters on their balance sheet, but operated in full by us. That lets us retain the technical control needed to run a cloud while scaling fast like a market. SFC’s ability to offer subleasing can significantly increase the levered returns for cluster owners.

Our hybrid model outperforms brokered contracts or other “compute markets,” which have to go through a network of counterparties to solve problems. It also lets us design custom solutions for our customers, like clusters deployed in regions next to your dataset or physical eval set or a large CPU fleet deployed colocated with your GPU cluster.

Our team includes senior & technically leadership from places like Lambda, Crusoe, Digital Ocean, AWS, and Hut8. Our CTO is the cofounder and former CEO of Voltage Park. In prior roles, our team has deployed 8GW of datacenter capacity & hundreds of thousands of GPUs. We’ve been described as having \u201Cthe highest talent density in the space.\u201D If you are an honorable, gritty person with eyes wide open & good epistemics, who wants to see AI go right, we’d love to work with you.

There has never been a more critical moment in history and it is up to us to shape it on behalf of those who come after us.

About the Role

GPU clusters are some of the most performant computers on the planet. Even smaller clusters by today’s standards would have ranked in the TOP500 five years ago. Our infrastructure team is responsible for architecting and deploying new clusters around the world and keeping them running smoothly. You’ll participate in on-call rotation, fix issues when they arise, and lean into automation to enable deployments at scale. We’re a small but ambitious team so you’ll be an early contributor helping to shape culture, mentor junior engineers, and learn from our customers.

About You

• You will have 10+ years of experience with hands‑on management or architecture with network for at least one GPU cluster in the past (ideally a cluster with >1k GPU’s but not required)


• You deeply understand the fundamentals of Ethernet (RoCEv2) and/or InfiniBand networks in CLOS/fat-tree topologies


• You have built HPC network architectures (eBGP, fat-tree, VXLAN, MCLAG, etc.)


• The idea of implementing zero-touch provisioning for a large multi-layer network excites you (you embrace automation)


• You appreciate, value and generate good documentation


• You have the ability and willingness to mentor junior engineers


• You’re open to coming in to our San Francisco office 3-4 days per week

Some Nice to Haves

• You understand data center concepts including power, cooling and how to engage with colo providers


• You have experience with Linux systems administration including managing kernel drivers and tuning the network stack


• You have experience with Linux virtualization (KVM, QEMU, libvirt, etc.)


• You’ve had exposure to containers and Kubernetes operators

Benefits

• Generous equity grant


• Team members are offered a competitive salary along with equity in the company


• Visa Sponsorships


• Yes, we sponsor visas and work permits


• Retirement matching


• We match 401(k) plans up to 4%


• Medical, dental & vision


• We offer highly competitive medical, dental, vision insurance for employees and dependents.


• Time off


• We offer unlimited paid time off as well as 10+ observed holidays


• Parental leave


• We offer biological, adoptive, and foster parents paid time off to spend quality time with family


• Daily lunch


• We cover lunch daily for employees


• Unlimited office book budget


• You can buy as many books for the office as you want

The San Francisco Compute Company is committed to maintaining a workplace free from discrimination and harassment.

We make employment decisions based on business needs, job requirements, and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, belief, national origin, social or ethical origin, age, physical, mental, or sensory disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, civil union or domestic partnership status, past or present military service, HIV status, family medical history or genetic information, family or parental status including pregnancy, or any other status protected by law.

We welcome the opportunity to consider qualified applicants with prior arrest or conviction records. Our commitment to diversity includes hiring talented individuals regardless of their criminal history, in accordance with local, state, and federal laws, including San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance and California’s ban-the-box laws.