Senior Solutions Architect – AI Infrastructure Networking

This is a fully remote position, open to applicants in Germany.

📋 Description

• Take ownership of the network solutions for k0rdent AI, Mirantis's platform dedicated to the construction and operation of GPU clouds and AI factories.

• Design extensive GPU cluster interconnects, ensuring tenant isolation and workload connectivity for containers, virtual machines, and bare-metal nodes.

• Produce published reference architectures, functional code, and proofs of concept using actual hardware.

• Define compute fabrics utilizing InfiniBand and RoCEv2 Ethernet, incorporating rail-optimized and fat-tree/Clos designs.

• Establish front-end, storage, and management networks, as well as connections to customer data centers, public clouds, and hybrid environments.

• Specify multi-tenant isolation through InfiniBand partitions, VRFs, EVPN-VXLAN, and Kubernetes network policies.

• Document scalability limits and trade-offs related to cost, performance, operability, and vendor lock-in.

• Define Linux host networking configurations for NICs, DPUs, and SuperNICs, including PCI passthrough, SR-IOV, IOMMU, NUMA, and GPU-NIC affinity.

• Design Kubernetes networking tailored for AI workloads using CNIs, Multus, SR-IOV, RDMA plugins, NVIDIA Network Operator, and DRA.

• Develop KubeVirt networking for GPU and RDMA traffic.

• Investigate emerging AI networking technologies and standards, prototype alternatives, and benchmark their performance.

• Publish research notes, design proposals, technical papers, blog entries, and deliver talks.

• Build and execute proofs of concept for customers and partners, evaluating results against established success criteria.

• Create automation and tooling using Python, Go, Bash, Ansible, Helm, Kubernetes manifests, and Terraform.

• Validate and benchmark fabrics and host configurations using NCCL tests, perftest, and ib_write_bw.

• Act as the network subject matter expert during customer discovery sessions, design reviews, and architecture workshops.

• Collaborate with hardware and networking partners on joint designs and validating solutions.

• Relay research outcomes back to Product and Engineering teams, contributing to the k0rdent AI roadmap.

• Present at industry conferences, webinars, and partner summits; conduct technical workshops.

• Write reference architectures, solution briefs, blog posts, and internal enablement materials.

⛳️ Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Telecommunications, or a related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

• Over 8 years of experience in network engineering or network architecture.

• Minimum of 3 years in networking within data center, HPC, or cloud infrastructure environments.

• Customer-facing experience as a solutions architect, pre-sales engineer, consultant, or technical lead.

• Proficiency in data center network design, including spine-leaf and Clos topologies, rail-optimized GPU fabrics, oversubscription, and ECMP.

• Expertise in InfiniBand, covering subnet management, partitioning, adaptive routing, and NCCL/RDMA traffic.

• Knowledge of RoCEv2 Ethernet, including PFC, ECN, DCQCN, QoS, MTU, and buffer tuning.

• Familiarity with BGP, EVPN-VXLAN, and VRFs for multi-tenancy purposes.

• Experience in hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity, interconnects, VPN, cloud networking, IP addressing, and DNS planning.

• Understanding of Linux networking, including NICs, PCI passthrough, SR-IOV, IOMMU, NUMA affinity, iproute2, ethtool, and devlink.

• Knowledge of Kubernetes networking, involving CNI plugins, Multus, secondary networks, SR-IOV and RDMA device plugins, network policies, and service exposure.

• Experience with KubeVirt and VM networking, including passthrough and SR-IOV.

• Proficiency in programming or scripting in at least one language; Python or Go preferred.

• Comfortable using Git, CI, and infrastructure-as-code methodologies.

• Excellent proficiency in written and spoken English.

• Comfortable presenting to large audiences and facilitating hands-on workshops.

• Ability to adjust communication styles to engage both network engineers and customer executives.

• Experience working in an international, distributed company across different time zones and work cultures.

🏝️ Benefits

• Compensation and benefits are aligned with the local market and employment arrangement.

• Remote work options available.

• Travel opportunities of up to 25% for customer engagements, partner meetings, lab work, and industry events.

• Direct collaboration with leading GPU cloud operators, NeoClouds, sovereign clouds, and AI-focused enterprises.

• Work alongside a world-class, distributed team.

• Opportunity to influence the product narrative and contribute to go-to-market success.