Principal Systems Architect (AI)

Location: Must be based in or able to commute to San Jose, San Francisco, or Bellevue offices 4 days per week

Salary: $314,000 – $465,000 per year (varies by location)

Company

Lambda is a leader in AI cloud infrastructure, providing high-performance compute solutions to researchers and enterprises to make superintelligence ubiquitous.

What you will do

• Architect and define scalable compute platforms optimized for AI/ML, simulation, and high-throughput workloads.
• Develop compute system standards and design patterns to ensure consistency, performance, and maintainability.
• Evaluate emerging CPU, GPU, and accelerator technologies to make architectural tradeoff decisions regarding density, power, and cost.
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to map workload requirements to platform capabilities.
• Define compute platform roadmaps and architectural reference designs for hardware and cluster deployment.
• Mentor systems engineers on performance tuning, sizing, and architectural strategy.

Requirements

• 7+ years of experience architecting large-scale 10k-100k+ GPU HPC or cloud compute platforms.
• Deep knowledge of CPU/GPU architectures, memory hierarchies, and accelerator topologies.
• Experience designing systems around high-bandwidth, low-latency fabrics (NVLink, InfiniBand, and RoCE).
• Strong understanding of system performance tuning, resource scheduling, and thermal/power optimization.
• Ability to work across hardware and software boundaries, including OS behavior and orchestration layers.
• Must be able to work onsite 4 days per week in San Jose, San Francisco, or Bellevue.

Nice to have

• Hands-on experience with AI/ML workloads and performance characteristics.
• Familiarity with HPC orchestration tools like Slurm or Kubernetes.
• Experience with GPU virtualization technologies.
• Background in compute telemetry and real-time performance profiling.

Culture & Benefits

• Generous cash and equity compensation.
• Comprehensive health, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents.
• 401k Plan with 2% company match.
• Flexible paid time off policy.
• Wellness and commuter stipends for select roles.