Staff Network Engineer (AI Infrastructure)

Vcluster; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 170,000 - 210,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive Salary

Premium Insurance

Flexible Working Schedule

Workplace Flexibility

Job summary

vCluster Labs is building AI infrastructure at scale with a remote-first culture. The Staff Network Engineer will design and implement fabric automation for NVIDIA switches and InfiniBand fabrics, while ensuring network state consistency and fault tolerance across large AI cloud environments.

You will contribute to open-source projects and collaborate with a small R&D team including the CTO, growing to own core networking areas as the platform evolves.

Qualifications

• Built network automation that configures switches, routers, or load balancers.
• Hands-on NVIDIA networking experience with UFM, Spectrum/Quantum, or NVUE.
• Strong InfiniBand, VLAN, VXLAN, EVPN, and BGP knowledge at scale.
• Production-scale networks with automation-based fixes rather than runbooks.
• Software engineering ability in Go or Python with version control.

Responsibilities

• Fabric automation to provision and configure NVIDIA switches and InfiniBand fabrics.
• Network config management and sync to keep VLAN/VXLAN state in sync.
• NAT gateway and L4 load balancing development for tenant clusters.
• Scale/failure engineering for large networks and failover design.
• Run automation on AI cloud environments and derive product requirements.
• Contribute to design and standards across vCluster networking.

Skills

Network automation

Fabric automation

InfiniBand

BGP

Go or Python

Open source contributions

AI networking depth

Production-scale experience

NVIDIA networking experience

Debug/operational discipline

Tools

NVIDIA UFM

NVIDIA Spectrum/Quantum switches

Cumulus Linux

NVUE

SONiC

FRRouting

Cilium

MetalLB

Kubernetes

Job description

Join us to Build the Future of AI Infrastructure

We are a VC-backed tech startup in hyper-growth, redefining what's possible at the intersection of AI and cloud-native infrastructure. Our global remote-first culture is built for the best talent, wherever you are.

We're building the infrastructure that powers the world's largest AI Clouds. Filter by department or location to find your place in that work below.

Employment Type

Full time

Location Type

Remote

Compensation

As a Staff Network Engineer at vCluster Labs, you aren't just configuring switches; you are building the automation logic that configures them. AI Clouds run on InfiniBand and high-speed Ethernet fabrics that most teams still wire up by hand, one customer at a time. You will build the automation that turns that fabric into repeatable provisioning logic. You start in a small R&D group alongside our CTO and grow into owning this area as it becomes a core part of our platform.

As a Staff Network Engineer, your role will include:

• Fabric automation: You will design and build the systems that automatically provision and configure NVIDIA switches and InfiniBand fabrics, including integration with NVIDIA UFM. Manual, per-customer switch setup is the thing you are replacing.
• Network config management and sync: You will build the control loop that keeps switch, VLAN, and VXLAN state consistent with what our platform intends, detects drift, and reconciles it safely in production.
• NAT gateway and L4 load balancing: You will build the gateway and load balancing layer that tenant clusters depend on for connectivity, with failover designed in from day one rather than bolted on later.
• Scale and failure engineering: You will define how our network layer behaves at large scale: BGP route table limits, convergence, failover, and what happens when a link, switch, or gateway dies under real AI workloads.
• Customer Zero for AI networking: You will run your automation on real AI Cloud environments, bring back what breaks, and turn hard-won operational lessons into product behavior our customers never have to think about.
• Technical direction: You will help decide what we build versus integrate with partner solutions, write the design and requirements docs, and set the standards for how networking works across vCluster products.

This role could be a fit for you if you bring:

• You have built network automation, not just operated networks: You have shipped software that configures switches, routers, or load balancers programmatically, ideally as part of a product or internal platform other teams relied on.
• NVIDIA networking experience: Hands-on work with NVIDIA UFM, NVIDIA Spectrum or Quantum switches, Cumulus Linux, or NVUE, including programming against their APIs.
• Deep fabric fundamentals: Strong command of InfiniBand, VLAN, VXLAN and EVPN, and BGP, including how they behave and fail at production scale.
• Production scale scars: You have run networks at real production scale, seen them break, and helped fix the root cause with automation rather than runbooks.
• Software engineering ability: You write production code in Go or Python, use version control and code review as a matter of course, and think of network config as code.
• AI networking depth: Experience tuning fabrics for GPU training or inference workloads, such as RoCEv2, congestion control, rail-optimized topologies, or Spectrum-X.
• AI Cloud or hyperscaler background: You helped build network automation at a GPU cloud, hyperscaler, or large CDN.
• Load balancer and gateway internals: Experience building L4 load balancers or NAT gateways, including with eBPF/XDP or DPDK.
• Open source: Contributions to networking or Kubernetes projects such as SONiC, FRRouting, Cilium, or MetalLB.

About vCluster Labs

We're the #1 platform for AI infrastructure, trusted by the world's fastest-growing AI cloud builders. We're a venture-backed startup that's raised over $28M from top-tier investors including Khosla Ventures (first investor in OpenAI, GitLab, Stripe, and DoorDash), and we're in a hyper-growth phase looking for motivated people to join our team. Our headquarters are in San Francisco (Salesforce Tower), but our team is distributed around the globe with a remote-first culture.

We give AI Cloud providers and AI factories a hyperscaler-like experience on their own GPU infrastructure. Our platform runs the full stack an operator needs, from bare metal provisioning and node lifecycle management up through managed Kubernetes, Slurm, Ray, and inference clusters, so they can turn raw GPUs into cluster products they can sell in days instead of spending 12+ months building it themselves. Today we power over 100,000 GPUs and 1 million CPUs across 50+ AI clouds and Fortune 500 companies, backed by a team of 40+ infrastructure engineers who build alongside our customers rather than just shipping them software.

We're the company behind vCluster, the open source technology for tenant isolation on Kubernetes, with 11,000+ GitHub stars and 40M+ tenant clusters created since 2021. Open source is part of our DNA. At KubeCon North America 2025, we launched our Infrastructure Tenancy Platform for AI, a Kubernetes-native framework built for running AI, ML, and GPU-intensive workloads anywhere, with an NVIDIA-validated reference architecture for DGX systems.

We offer the following benefits:

• Competitive Salary: We offer a competitive compensation package, including equity.
• Premium Insurance: Health, dental, vision, and life Insurance, including plans for you and eligible dependents (benefits vary depending on country).
• Flexible Working Schedule: You have a doctor’s appointment or need to head to the supermarket to get groceries at 2pm? We won’t have an issue with that. To us, results matter more than clocking in and out at the same time every day.
• Workplace Flexibility: We’re very flexible about where you work. We know things can change in life and we’re happy to adjust the work environment for you along the way.

Culture & Values

At vCluster Labs, we value and stand for:

Make it Happen: We have a relentless bias for action and the grit to push through obstacles. We do whatever it takes to figure it out, put in the work, and ruthlessly prioritize the actions that drive measurable impact for the business.

Own the Outcome: We understand that our responsibility doesn't end when a task is checked off; it ends when the value is delivered. We connect our daily individual actions to the broader success of the company and our customers.

Create Wow: We measure success by the experience we generate, both inside and outside the company. For our customers, this means impressive speed and intuitive experiences. For our team, this means going the extra mile to support one another and to continuously drive each other to new heights.

Open Source, Open Mind: We are actively contributing to and maintaining open-source projects. Internally, we foster meritocracy — the strongest ideas win, no matter who or where they come from.

Build Tomorrow’s Standards, Intentionally: We don't just ship software; we define the state-of-the-art of tomorrow. We are fearless in tearing down old approaches to build something better, but we are disciplined in how we do it because we know our users rely on our technology to run mission-critical infrastructure platforms.

Compensation Range: $170K - $210K

Values Driven Culture

Own it. Ship it. Wow them. Our five values aren't a list on our website; they're how decisions get made every day.

As we scale to meet the demands of the world’s largest AI Clouds and enterprises, your career trajectory scales with us.

Impact from Day 1

Your work directly influences our product roadmap and the global cloud-native ecosystem.

We use a data-driven approach to compensation to ensure our team is paid fairly and equitably.

What to expect in our hiring process

Application Review

We review your resume, track record, and prior work examples to assess your skills and experience against the specific requirements of the role. This step ensures we respect your time by only moving forward if there is a strong potential match.

Talent Screening

You will have an initial conversation with a Talent Partner. This discussion focuses on your background, your motivations for seeking a new role, and an introduction to vCluster’s culture and mission. It is our chance to get to know you beyond the resume.

Department Screening

You will meet with the Hiring Manager for a 45-minute deep dive. This conversation focuses on the specific criteria for the role and gives you a chance to learn more about the team’s goals. This step determines if you move forward to the challenge and panel stages.

Our panel consists of a series of 1:1 conversations with future teammates. To ensure fairness and reduce bias, these interviews are structured with standardized questions, where each interviewer focuses on a specific area of expertise related to the role.

The Challenge

We believe in seeing your skills in action. Depending on the role, you will complete a work sample, presentation, or technical assessment. This ensures our evaluation is objective and based on practical ability rather than just conversation.

Executive Interview & Offer

The final step is a conversation with a member of our executive team. Following a successful debrief, our Talent Partner will extend an offer and welcome you to the team!