Senior AI Cluster Engineer: Kernel & NIC Optimization

Cisco Systems, Inc.; Milpitas (CA); On-site; USD 168,000 - 245,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) matching

Medical, dental, vision insurance

Paid parental leave

Disability coverage

Life insurance

Restricted stock units (RSUs)

Job summary

Cisco Systems, Inc. is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to debug, profile, and optimize the AI cluster networking and GPU performance stack from boot to application level.

You will tackle kernel-level failures, PCIe issues, driver behavior, and network latency while tuning RDMA/RoCEv2, NCCL, and NIC performance. The role requires strong C/C++/Python skills and hands-on experience with Linux kernel and distributed systems debugging, in a fast-paced, hardware-influenced environment.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or higher with 4+ years of relevant experience in Linux kernel, networking, GPU, or distributed systems debugging
• Proficiency in C/C++, C++, Python; experience with user-mode and kernel-mode drivers
• Experience with Linux network stack, RDMA/RoCEv2, NCCL, PCIe; strong debugging and profiling skills

Responsibilities

• Debug, profile, and optimize the AI cluster networking and GPU performance stack across boot-time to application level
• Investigate kernel-level failures, PCIe issues, driver behavior, and network latency
• Tune RDMA/RoCEv2, NCCL, SmartNIC/DPU, NIC queues, congestion, throughput, and collective communications
• Read and correlate traces from host CPUs, PCIe switches, SmartNICs, and GPU streams
• Capture and analyze Wireshark packets, system logs, and observability data
• Collaborate with hardware and software teams to remove end-to-end bottlenecks

Skills

Linux kernel debugging and profiling

Networking

GPU performance tuning

Distributed systems debugging

C/C++/Python programming

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/EE

Tools

NVIDIA Nsight

Nsight profiling tools

NVIDIA diagnostic tooling

Wireshark

RDMA/NCCL tooling

Job description

Cisco Systems, Inc. is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to debug, profile, and optimize the AI cluster networking and GPU performance stack from boot to application level.

You will tackle kernel-level failures, PCIe issues, driver behavior, and network latency while tuning RDMA/RoCEv2, NCCL, and NIC performance. The role requires strong C/C++/Python skills and hands-on experience with Linux kernel and distributed systems debugging, in a fast-paced, hardware-influenced environment.