Technical Program Manager (Networking NPI)

Location: New York, San Francisco, or Seattle, United States. Travel to vendor labs and US pilot sites is required as needed.

Base salary: $190,000–$260,000 USD per year, with potential bonus, equity, and/or commission programs.

Company

Nscale provides high-performance GPU cloud infrastructure for AI start-ups and enterprise customers.

What you will do

• Own NPI programs for new networking platforms from vendor selection and early samples through lab qualification, pilot build, and deployment release.
• Build phase-gate plans with entry and exit criteria, ownership, timelines, dashboards, and reporting.
• Lead qualification and validation of switches, NICs/DPUs, optics, cables, and network operating systems, including interoperability, performance, burn-in, and failure testing.
• Drive vendor engagement, including roadmap alignment, sample allocation, defect and RMA tracking, firmware and NOS readiness, and escalation of blocking issues.
• Partner with architecture and engineering teams on production-ready reference builds, golden configurations, BOMs, cabling and rack standards, and acceptance tests.
• Lead pilot builds, readiness reviews, documentation, training, supply planning, risk management, and handoff to Deployment.

Requirements

• 5+ years in technical program management, hardware NPI, or network engineering, with direct ownership of bringing new network hardware or architectures into production.
• Experience at a hyperscaler, major network or silicon vendor, ODM/OEM, or comparable large-scale environment.
• Hands-on experience with hardware qualification, lab validation, interoperability testing, firmware and NOS lifecycles, defect triage, and phase-gate NPI processes.
• Strong technical grounding in data center and cluster networking, including Ethernet, InfiniBand, RoCE, BGP, EVPN/VXLAN, optics and transceivers, and structured cabling.
• Ability to drive vendors and cross-functional engineering teams toward decisions amid changing designs, schedules, and supply constraints.
• Ability to work in ambiguity, define processes, and make clear readiness decisions.
• Excellent written and verbal communication, including presenting technical trade-offs to senior leadership.
• Willingness to travel to vendor labs and pilot sites as needed.

Nice to have

• NPI experience with networking for large GPU clusters, HPC, or AI training environments.
• Experience qualifying 400G/800G/1.6T optics, co-packaged or linear-drive optics, or new SerDes generations.
• Familiarity with Fat Tree, Rail-optimized, or Dragonfly topologies and NVIDIA Spectrum-X or Quantum InfiniBand platforms.
• Exposure to Python, Ansible, traffic generators such as IXIA/Keysight or Spirent, and network automation or test tooling.
• Supply chain or manufacturing ramp experience for new hardware.
• PMP, PgMP, or similar certification.

Culture & Benefits

• Culture centered on innovation, ownership, accountability, openness, transparency, and urgency.
• Medical, dental, and vision benefits, flexible paid time off, parental leave, and retirement plan participation may be available.
• The role may include bonus, equity, and/or commission programs in addition to base salary.
• Inclusive and equitable workplace with accommodations available for specific needs.