System Design Engineer – AI Cluster Storage Architect

Advanced Micro Devices; Austin (TX); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Advanced Micro Devices in Austin, TX is seeking an engineer who thrives on exploration and solving complex HPC and AI storage challenges. This hands-on role focuses on researching AI infrastructure, documenting reference architectures, and creating reproducible experiments and deployment blueprints to guide internal teams and customers on how AMD-based systems perform at scale.

You will craft technical artifacts, evaluate storage technologies, and build small reference implementations.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated end-to-end systems thinking and debugging skills.
• Experience with HPC clusters and AI-oriented storage.
• Ability to author technical artifacts and design docs.
• Familiarity with schedulers and orchestration in HPC/AI environments.

Responsibilities

• Shape AI infrastructure by creating reference architectures and deployment blueprints.
• Build a library of technical artifacts to support pre-sales and skill-up initiatives.
• Evaluate HPC/AI stacks focusing on storage solutions and trade-offs.
• Design reproducible experiments and benchmarking harnesses for storage tech.
• Develop reference implementations to validate performance hypotheses.

Skills

HPC systems thinking

Storage solutions

Linux fundamentals

AI/HPC workload knowledge

Benchmarking and analysis

Documentation and communication

Orchestration (Slurm/Kubernetes)

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in Electrical/Computer Engineering

Tools

Slurm

Kubernetes

MPI/OpenMP

Job description

THE ROLE

This is a hands‑on role for engineers who thrive on exploration, love solving complex systems problems, and are passionate about HPC and AI. You’ll bring your HPC expertise to a research and development‑focused team that investigates AI infrastructure across compute, storage, networking, and orchestration layers. Your work and knowledge will help shape reference architectures, configuration guides, and reproducible experiments that support internal teams, pre‑sales engineers, and customers in making informed hardware and software decisions. The primary focus for this role is on storage solutions for AI/HPC, benchmarking proof points, and creation of reference architecture and other supporting collateral related specifically to storage solutions in support of AMD‑based AI and HPC clustered systems at scale.

Our team operates across industry verticals as subject matter experts in the AI stack and across the cluster. We’re building a library of technical artifacts such as design docs, presentations, and “how it works” guides to help others skill up from an HPC perspective in the AI space. This is a high‑autonomy role focused on creation, not operations. If you enjoy building, learning, debugging tough issues, and writing about what you discover, we want to hear from you!

THE PERSON

You’re an engineer, a systems thinker and professional troubleshooter who sees the big picture and thrives on researching and experimentation. You’ve worked hands‑on with HPC clusters and HPC/AI‑oriented storage solutions and are eager to explore how AI workloads like inferencing and training fit into HPC style infrastructure. You’re not looking for a runbook, you’re looking to build the blueprint.

You’re self‑directed, proactive, and comfortable navigating ambiguity to solve complex problems. You communicate clearly, enjoy writing technical artifacts that help others understand intricate systems, and collaborate naturally with internal teams and customers. You get excited to teach others what you know. Whether you’re diving into a new stack or refining a reference architecture, you bring curiosity, initiative, and a drive to create.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

• Apply your HPC expertise to shape AI infrastructure by creating reference architectures, configuration guides, and deployment blueprints that help internal teams and customers make informed hardware and software decisions
• Build a library of technical artifacts—including presentations, design documents, and “how it works” guides, to support pre‑sales engineers and enable others to skill up from an HPC perspective
• Perform deep technical evaluations of HPC and AI stacks with a specific focus on storage solutions, documenting how they work, where they fit, and the trade‑offs involved between storage technologies and vendors
• Design and execute reproducible experiments and benchmarking harnesses to compare storage technologies and their fit‑for‑purpose across AI and HPC workloads
• Develop small reference implementations and tools to validate performance hypotheses, analyze system behavior and more
• Present findings through demos, documentation, and internal talks, and create templates and checklists to support repeatable evaluations and cluster designs

PREFERRED EXPERIENCE

• Engineering mindset: Evidence of end‑to‑end systems thinking, debugging, and trade‑off decisions
• Storage/data: parallel filesystems (Lustre, BeeGFS), object stores, RDMA, data pipeline throughput and caching strategies
• Extensive knowledge of the current storage vendor landscape
• AI/HPC cluster background: hands‑on familiarity with schedulers and/or orchestration systems (e.g., Slurm, Kubernetes), MPI/OpenMP, distributed storage patterns, or performance analysis
• Comparative analysis: experience writing evaluation docs/RFCs with clear criteria, benchmarks, risks, and recommendations
• Strong Linux fundamentals: Linux operating systems, networking, filesystems, containers, performance tooling (perf, flamegraphs, nvprof/rocprof, basic eBPF)
• Clear communication: ability to turn complex systems into accessible, structured documentation with diagrams and reproducible steps
• AMD ecosystem experience: ROCm, RCCL, Instinct GPUs, EPYC platforms, compiler/toolchain impacts, and performance tuning
• Distributed training internals: DDP, collective comms, sharded/stateful optimizers; NCCL/RCCL behavior and transport considerations (PCIe, NVLink, IF)
• Orchestration models: Slurm configuration patterns, Kubernetes for HPC/AI (GPU operators, device plugins), Apptainer/Singularity
• Enterprise storage solutions (NAS, NFS), particularly large scale, and design patterns for federation/replication, backup, and DR
• IaC literacy: Terraform/Ansible for reproducible blueprints—focused on design and sample configs, not running prod clusters
• Documentation tooling: reproducible docs/workbooks, literate programming notebooks, CI for benchmarks

ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS

• Bachelors or Masters degree in electrical, computer, or related engineering field

LOCATION

Austin, TX (preferred), Santa Clara, CA, Secaucus, NJ, and Markham, Canada

This role is not eligible for visa sponsorship.

Benefits offered are described: AMD benefits at a glance.

AMD does not accept unsolicited resumes from headhunters, recruitment agencies, or fee‑based recruitment services. AMD and its subsidiaries are equal opportunity, inclusive employers and will consider all applicants without regard to age, ancestry, color, marital status, medical condition, mental or physical disability, national origin, race, religion, political and/or third‑party affiliation, sex, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity, military or veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. We encourage applications from all qualified candidates and will accommodate applicants’ needs under the respective laws throughout all stages of the recruitment and selection process.

AMD may use Artificial Intelligence to help screen, assess or select applicants for this position. AMD’s “Responsible AI Policy” is available here.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.