Staff/Sr. Staff Forward Deployed Engineer

Groq; New York (NY); Hybrid; USD 270,000 - 402,000; Full time

Job summary

Groq is seeking a Staff/Sr. Staff Forward Deployed Engineer focused on AI Infrastructure to advance production deployments of large‑scale AI systems.

You will drive engagements from discovery to PoCs, deployment, and production readiness across GPU and Groq platforms. Based in the United States (Dallas, SF, or NYC area preferred), you’ll work hands-on with Linux, Kubernetes, Slurm, networking, and platform integrations, while collaborating with cross‑functional teams to ensure scalable, reliable

Qualifications

• 4+ years building, deploying, or operating cloud/AI infrastructure.
• Strong Linux and distributed-systems fundamentals; practical Kubernetes/Slurm/bare-metal experience.
• Deep technical depth in at least one area (GPU/accelerator, networking, storage, or platform engineering).
• Knowledge of AI training and inference workloads and their impact on compute, networking, storage, scheduling, latency, and throughput.
• Strong Python/Go/Bash scripting for diagnostics and automation.
• Track record of debugging and delivering systems, not only architecture.
• Ability to decompose ambiguous problems into concrete actions across teams.
• Strong written and verbal communication; ability to gather requirements and document work.
• Comfort in a fast-moving environment where requirements and capabilities evolve.

Responsibilities

• Own technical execution across complex customer engagements from discovery to PoCs and production readiness.
• Translate ambiguous requirements into practical architectures, plans, and runbooks.
• Hands-on work across Linux, bare-metal, Kubernetes, Slurm, networking, storage, and Groq platform integrations.
• Support large-scale GPU deployments including health checks, benchmarking, and production readiness.
• Understand AI workloads to reason about training/inference performance and data movement.
• Lead PoCs, architecture reviews, and demonstrations; explain design choices and risks clearly.
• Collaborate with Networking and Security on private connectivity, peering, routing, and security reviews.
• Troubleshoot production/pre-production issues and coordinate with internal experts to resolution.
• Embed with Platform/Cloud/Infrastructure teams to address gaps through engineering execution.
• Build reusable tools, patterns, and documentation to improve future deployments.
• Provide structured feedback to Product/Engineering for platform improvements.

Skills

Linux fundamentals

Kubernetes

Slurm

Python/Go/Bash

Distributed systems

Networking

Performance debugging

Automation tooling

Tools

CUDA

NVIDIA GPU infra

DCGM

InfiniBand

RoCE

Docker

Job description

Mission

As a Staff/Sr. Staff Forward Deployed Engineer focused on AI Infrastructure at Groq, you will work at the frontier of large-scale AI systems, taking complex customer infrastructure programs from requirements to working production environments. You’ll help bring some of the newest accelerator and infrastructure technologies into production, spanning next-generation NVIDIA GPU systems alongside Groq’s purpose-built inference platform.

Location: This role will be based in one of our three hiring hubs: the Dallas, San Francisco, or New York City area. The person hired for this role must be based in one of these three areas. You’ll have the flexibility to work remotely while we establish our local Groq office, with the expectation that this role will transition to onsite once the office opens.

Responsibilities & Opportunities In This Role

• Own technical execution across complex customer engagements, from discovery and architecture through PoCs, demos, deployment, cluster bring‑up, validation, acceptance, production readiness, and operational handoff.
• Translate incomplete or ambiguous customer requirements into practical architectures, implementation plans, test criteria, runbooks, and concrete engineering actions.
• Work hands‑on across Linux, bare‑metal infrastructure, Kubernetes and Slurm, networking, storage, observability, automation, and Groq platform integrations to bring customer environments online and resolve issues.
• Support large‑scale GPU and LPX deployments, including infrastructure bring‑up, cluster health and performance validation, workload testing, benchmarking, failure isolation, and production‑readiness evidence.
• Understand customer AI workloads well enough to reason about training and inference behavior, concurrency, throughput, latency, data movement, caching, scheduling, and infrastructure bottlenecks.
• Lead technical portions of customer discovery, architecture reviews, demonstrations, and proofs of concept, clearly explaining design choices, tradeoffs, performance results, and risks to both engineering and business stakeholders.
• Partner with Networking and Security teams on customer requirements such as private connectivity and peering, routing, ingress and egress, load balancing, network policy, access controls, security architecture reviews, and enterprise security diligence.
• Troubleshoot production and pre‑production issues that cross organizational or technical boundaries, drive them to resolution, and coordinate the right internal experts without losing end‑to‑end ownership.
• Embed with Platform, Cloud, Infrastructure, or Operations teams when priority customer deployments expose gaps that require concentrated engineering execution, automation, or integration work.
• Build reusable tools, automation, reference architectures, test suites, deployment patterns, documentation, and lessons learned so that customer‑specific engineering makes the platform better for the next deployment.
• Bring structured customer feedback and field evidence back to Product and Engineering, identifying recurring gaps and helping turn one‑off solutions into repeatable platform capabilities.

Ideal Candidates Have/Are

• 4+ years of hands‑on experience building, deploying, operating, or troubleshooting cloud infrastructure, AI infrastructure, HPC systems, large‑scale platforms, or similarly demanding production environments.
• Strong Linux and distributed‑systems fundamentals, with practical experience in Kubernetes, Slurm, bare‑metal environments, or comparable infrastructure platforms.
• Meaningful technical depth in at least one area such as GPU or accelerator systems, networking, storage, orchestration/platform engineering, or infrastructure reliability, with enough breadth to troubleshoot across adjacent layers.
• Working knowledge of AI training and inference workloads and how workload characteristics affect compute, networking, storage, scheduling, latency, and throughput.
• Strong Python, Go, Bash, or equivalent scripting/programming skills for diagnostics, automation, deployment tooling, testing, or integrations.
• A track record of personally debugging and delivering systems rather than operating only at the architecture, project‑management, or escalation level.
• Ability to break ambiguous problems into concrete technical actions and drive issues to resolution when responsibility spans multiple teams.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to gather requirements from customer engineers, explain technical tradeoffs clearly, and document work so that others can reproduce it.
• Comfortable operating in a fast‑moving environment where customer requirements, platform capabilities, and implementation details can evolve in parallel.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience at a neocloud, hyperscaler, AI infrastructure provider, HPC environment, frontier AI company, or other organization operating large‑scale accelerator infrastructure.
• Hands‑on experience with NVIDIA GPU infrastructure and technologies such as CUDA, NCCL, NVLink/NVSwitch, DCGM, GPU Operator, InfiniBand, RoCE, Kubernetes, or Slurm.
• Experience bringing up, qualifying, or operating multi‑node GPU clusters, including health checks, burn‑in or stress testing, collective‑communication testing, performance benchmarking, and acceptance criteria.
• Familiarity with high‑performance storage systems such as VAST, Weka, Lustre, Ceph, or similar technologies and the data‑access patterns of distributed AI workloads.
• Experience with infrastructure automation and lifecycle tooling such as Terraform, Ansible, CI/CD, BMC/Redfish, PXE/iPXE, or related systems.
• Prior solutions engineering, sales engineering, solutions architecture, or technical pre‑sales experience in cloud, networking, security, AI infrastructure, or data center systems.
• Customer‑facing networking experience including private interconnects and peering, BGP and routing, load balancing, Kubernetes/Cilium network policy, and north‑south and east‑west traffic design.
• Customer‑facing security experience including access‑control architecture, network isolation, enterprise security reviews, and SOC 2 / ISO 27001‑style diligence or questionnaires.
• Experience defining or executing technical PoCs, reference architectures, cluster acceptance tests, performance benchmarks, migration plans, or production‑readiness criteria.

Why Join Us

• Purposeful Hiring: You’re not here by accident, and neither is anyone else. Every teammate is handpicked with intention because who we build with matters.
• Builders Wanted: You’re not just riding the rocket ship, you’re building it. Your work directly shapes the trajectory of our company.
• Mission‑Driven Work: We’re here to make a real impact. Our mission fuels everything we do.
• Tackling Hard Problems: If easy isn’t your thing, you’re in the right place. We solve some of the most complex and exciting challenges in our space.
• Excellence Is The Standard: High performance isn’t just encouraged, it’s the baseline. And it’s contagious.

Compensation

Groq is committed to providing competitive compensation through our Total Cash philosophy, which incorporates potential bonus value directly into base pay. The total cash salary ranges for this position, which is inclusive of the potential bonus value, is dependent by level:

• Staff: $270,400 - $365,800
• Sr. Staff: $341,400 - $401,600

Individual placement within these ranges is determined by your geographic location, experience, skills, and alignment with internal compensation standards. These ranges are specific to candidates located in the United States. Compensation for international candidates will vary based on local market dynamics. Beyond cash compensation, Groq also offers a Long‑Term Incentive (LTI) Program and a robust suite of employee benefits.