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Principal Engineer (Cloud Platform) – Graphcore
About Graphcore
At Graphcore, we’re building the future of AI compute. We’re a team of semiconductor, software and AI experts, with deep experience in creating the complete AI compute stack—from silicon and software to infrastructure at datacenter scale. As part of the SoftBank Group, backed by significant long-term investment, we are delivering key technology into the fast-growing SoftBank AI ecosystem.
To meet the vast and exciting AI opportunity, Graphcore is expanding its teams around the world. We are bringing together the brightest minds to solve the toughest problems, in a place where everyone has the opportunity to make an impact on the company, our products, and the future of artificial intelligence.
Job Summary
We are looking for an experienced Principal Engineer to join our Cloud Platform Team and help develop and deploy clouds and services. Working closely with our colleagues in Software Platform, Datacentre Operations and Product Development teams, you will deploy services on our fleet of cutting-edge AI systems.
As part of our Software Platform organisation, you will be involved in:
- Cloud integration
- Validation
- Performance benchmarking
- Optimisation
- Development of our high-performance AI solutions, which include in-house AI systems alongside off-the-shelf servers, switches, and storage solutions.
This is a hands-on technical role requiring a solid background in:
- The use of cloud infrastructure
- Deployment using Infrastructure-as-Code
- Observability
- High-performance networking and storage systems
You may have experience in:
- An IT organisation
- A datacentre
- A cloud provider
- As a developer of orchestration or cloud services
The Software Platform Team at Graphcore
We build Graphcore products into large-scale AI solutions for our customers. The Cloud Platform Team is responsible for providing such systems to:
- Internal users via private clouds
- Customers via our public clouds
Often, these internal systems use and develop pre-release hardware and software, so comfort with unproven components is vital.
Responsibilities and Duties
- Operate and extend existing OpenStack-based cloud services, contributing to the deployment and development of new ones.
- Take ownership of significant technical initiatives and projects, mentoring a small team of junior engineers in best engineering practices.
- Develop and operate end-user services on our clouds.
- Support and turn end-user and product requirements into deployed services.
- Help build automation for collecting and analysing metrics and observability data.
- Work with users to report product-related issues to Engineering and QA departments.
- Collaborate with Datacentre Operations Engineers to maintain and operate the fleet of AI systems at peak performance in private clouds.
- Configure and test new Graphcore AI hardware and systems using Continuous Deployment and Infrastructure-as-Code across internal and external datacentres.
- Drive corrective actions for systems not operating correctly, working with DC engineers and Graphcore Engineering.
- Work with external vendors (e.g. switches, servers, storage) to specify, benchmark, and integrate third-party products into our Cloud Reference Design.
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Skills and Experience ([ALL REQUIRED])
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in a relevant subject.
- Solid infrastructure/IT experience with a proven track record of delivering technical output as an individual contributor.
- Experience managing or operating on-premises or private-cloud environments.
- Experience specifying, scoping, estimating, and detailing work plans using an Agile and Scrum framework, covering:
- Priorities
- Risks
- Issues
- Impacts
- Constraints
- Expert-level Linux scripting ability (Bash and Python required).
- Expert-level Linux system administration (Ubuntu, RHEL, and variants).
- Experience with version control systems (preferably Git), including managing system configurations or automation.
- Knowledge of Continuous Integration or testing pipelines (GitLab, GitHub, or similar).
- Hands-on experience deploying services using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC).
- Solid understanding of:
- Technologies underpinning cloud services (APIs, virtualisation of CPUs, IO, systems).
- Virtual networks
- Block storage
- Resource management and monitoring
- Expert with IaC automation tools (e.g. Terraform/OpenTofu, Ansible, Packer).
- Experience with container deployment and management (Docker, Podman, Apptainer).
- Experience with monitoring and observability solutions (e.g. Grafana, Prometheus, OpenSearch/ElasticSearch, Loki, Mimir, OpenTelemetry, Fluentd, Kafka).
- Excellent communication and presentation skills.
- Experience dealing with end-users of IT/cloud services.
- Ability to work independently, lead critical infrastructure projects, and focus on end-user availability without direct oversight.
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Desirable (but not required)
- Experience with OpenStack deployments or technologies they rely on (e.g. Ceph, Open vSwitch, KVM, QEMU).
- Experience working in High-Performance Computing (HPC) environments using SLURM or similar batch workload solutions.
- Strong skills in end-to-end deployment automation and CI/CD pipelines for containerised services, including:
- Build
- Test
- Deploy
- Manage
- Alert
- Destroy
- Rebuild
- Experience managing production Kubernetes clusters and workloads.
- Experience with workload queue management systems (SLURM, LSF, Kubernetes Kueue).
- Experience with managed switch configuration (e.g. EOS, SONiC, DNOS).
- Programming experience in Python3 (utilising classes and inheritance).
- Programming experience in Go.
Benefits
In addition to a competitive salary, we offer:
- Flexible working
- Generous annual leave policy
- Private medical insurance and health cash plan
- Dental plan
- Pension (5% matching)
- Life assurance and income protection
- Generous parental leave policy
- Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) for:
- Health
- Mental wellbeing
- Bereavement support
- Fresh food, snacks, and a barista bar at our central Bristol office
- A commitment to building an inclusive work environment
- An equal opportunities process
- Flexible interpreview adjustments—discuss with us if required
Note: Applicants must hold the right to work in the UK. At this time, we do not provide visa sponsorship.
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