[Hiring] AI Factory Network Architect @Runware

Role Description

As AI Factory Network Architect, you will own the network architecture of Runware's AI supercomputer, from the NVLink domain inside a server to the optical links between pods on two continents. This is a hands-on leadership role, not a slide-deck role. You will:

• Own the end-to-end network architecture for the AI Factory: the scale-up fabric (NVLink and NVSwitch domains), the scale-out fabric (InfiniBand and RoCE), the storage and management networks, and the pod-to-pod and inter-site backbone.
• Design the optical layer: transceiver and cable selection, co-packaged and linear-drive optics evaluation, DWDM for pod-to-pod and metro links, and the link budgets and reliability targets behind them.
• Define the reference network design for the Sonic Inference Pod so every new pod ships with a validated, repeatable fabric and joins the global network in days.
• Build and bring up the first fabrics yourself: rail-optimized topologies, subnet manager and routing configuration, adaptive routing, congestion control, QoS, and GPUDirect RDMA tuning, measured against inference throughput and tail latency rather than synthetic benchmarks.
• Work with the inference engine team so the Sonic Inference Engine's traffic patterns drive topology and buffer decisions.
• Run capacity planning and the vendor roadmap with NVIDIA, switch and optics suppliers, and carriers; negotiate technical specifications and lead evaluations of new fabric generations.
• Set the operating standard: telemetry, link-health monitoring, failure-domain design, automated fault isolation, and runbooks that let a small team operate tens of thousands of ports.
• Hire and lead a team of network engineers as the footprint grows, and act as the final technical escalation for fabric incidents across all sites.

Qualifications

• 15+ years designing, building, and operating high-performance networks, with a significant part of that in HPC or AI supercomputers at the scale of thousands of GPUs or more.
• Deep, hands-on InfiniBand experience: fabric design, subnet management, routing engines, adaptive routing, congestion control, and performance debugging at the port and queue-pair level.
• Working knowledge of NVLink and NVSwitch domains and how scale-up and scale-out fabrics interact for multi-GPU and multi-node inference and training.
• Optical networking depth: transceivers and cabling at 400G and 800G, link budgets, DWDM and coherent optics for inter-site links, and the operational realities of optics at scale.
• Hands-on RDMA experience across InfiniBand and RoCE, including GPUDirect, NCCL and collective behaviour, PFC and ECN tuning, and the trade-offs between the two.
• A track record of leading network teams through greenfield builds and production incidents.
• Comfort automating everything: Python or Go, infrastructure as code, and telemetry pipelines rather than CLI sessions.
• Clear writing and the ability to turn a design into a document that a site team on another continent can execute from.
• Willingness to travel to pod sites in the US and Europe for bring-up and major changes.

Requirements

• Experience with NVIDIA Spectrum-X, Quantum-X800, or Blackwell-generation NVLink systems, or the equivalent from a hyperscaler's in-house stack.
• Hands-on time with co-packaged optics, linear-drive pluggables, or photonic switching evaluations.
• Experience designing networks for modular or containerized data centers, edge sites, or deployments with constrained power and space.
• Background in inference-specific traffic patterns: disaggregated prefill and decode, KV-cache transfer, and multi-tenant serving across a shared fabric.
• Contributions to SONiC, OpenFabrics, UEC, or similar open networking efforts.
• Experience with sovereign or data-residency network designs, including inter-site encryption and segmentation.
• Prior work at a GPU cloud, hyperscaler, national lab, or AI lab building its own supercomputer.

Benefits

• Generous paid time off: vacation, sick days, public holidays.
• Meaningful stock options: share in the upside you create.
• Flexible hours: own your schedule outside core collaboration blocks.
• Family leave: paid maternity, paternity, and caregiver time.
• Company retreats: twice-yearly gatherings in inspiring locations.