Senior Systems Engineer - AI Infrastructure

Clockwork Systems, Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 230,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Catered lunch

Competitive compensation

Great benefits package

Job summary

Clockwork Systems is building infrastructure for fault-tolerant, high-performance distributed GPU training. You will work at the intersection of GPU systems, high-speed networking, and distributed coordination—designing and implementing systems at scale.

The role requires deep systems-building experience, strong C/C++ skills, and the ability to reason about distributed behavior. You will lead end-to-end design through production and contribute to a friendly, inclusive team with competitive

Qualifications

• Requires systems-building experience.
• Experience with distributed storage, databases, or coordination systems.
• Familiarity with runtimes, profilers, or performance tooling.
• Experience with high-performance network stacks and I/O systems.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement low-level systems software for GPU clusters.
• Modify and extend frameworks like PyTorch, NCCL, CUDA runtime.
• Build components to improve reliability and efficiency of large-scale GPU training.
• Debug complex distributed/concurrent systems with subtle failures.
• Own systems end-to-end from design to production.

Skills

C/C++ (systems)

Concurrency

Distributed systems

Performance profiling

GPU programming (CUDA)

Tools

PyTorch internals

NCCL

CUDA runtime

Job description

Clockwork.io – Software Driven Fabrics to increase GPU cluster utilization

Clockwork Systems was founded by Stanford researchers and veteran systems engineers who share a vision for redefining the foundations of distributed computing. As AI workloads grow increasingly complex, traditional infrastructure struggles to meet the demands of performance, reliability, and precise coordination. Clockwork is pioneering a software-driven approach to AI fabrics by delivering cross-stack observability to catch and quickly resolve problems, workload fault tolerance to keep jobs running through failures, and performance acceleration that dynamically routes and paces traffic to avoid congestion.

To learn more, visit www.clockwork.io

About the Role

We're building infrastructure for fault-tolerant, high-performance distributed GPU training. You'll work at the intersection of GPU systems, high-speed networking, and distributed coordination—designing and implementing systems that run at scale.This is a systems building role. You'll dig into internals, understand why things break under pressure, and design solutions that handle the messy reality of distributed systems.

What You'll Do

• Design and implement low-level systems software for GPU clusters
• Work with internals of frameworks like PyTorch, NCCL, CUDA runtime—not as a user, but modifying and extending them
• Build components that make large-scale GPU training more reliable and efficient
• Debug complex distributed/concurrent systems where failures are subtle and non-deterministic
• Own systems end-to-end: from design through production

What We're Looking For

Required: Systems building experience

You've designed and built complex systems—not just deployed or operated them Examples:

• Distributed storage, databases, or coordination systems
• Runtimes, profilers, or performance tooling
• Network stacks, protocols, or high-performance I/O systems
• Large-scale infrastructure at the systems layer

Core technical skills:

• Strong C/C++ in systems contexts (not just application code)
• Deep understanding of concurrency, memory models, and failure modes
• Experience reasoning about distributed system behavior: consistency, ordering, partial failures
• Comfortable reading and modifying large, unfamiliar code bases

Nice to have:

• GPU programming (CUDA) or GPU systems experience
• High-performance networking (RDMA, Infin iBand)
• ML framework or runtime internals
• Cluster scheduling or orchestration systems

We believe strong systems engineers pick up domain-specific tools quickly. We value your ability to reason about complex systems over checkbox familiarity with our specific stack.

• Lead design of significant system components
• Navigate ambiguity and define technical direction
• Mentor engineers and raise team capabilities
• 8+ years building systems software
• A friendly and inclusive workplace culture.
• Competitive compensation.
• A great benefits package.
• Catered lunch.

Compensation for this position will vary based on the skills and experience you bring, as well as internal equity considerations. For candidates hired at the posted level, the expected base salary range is $150,000 - $230,000. The offered compensation package may also include stock options or other equity awards, subject to Clockwork’s equity program and applicable approvals.

Clockwork Systems is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building world-class teams by welcoming bright, passionate individuals from all backgrounds. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, ancestry, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, disability, or protected veteran status. We believe diversity drives innovation, and we grow stronger together.