Staff Cloud Engineer

AboutGraphcore

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 foran experiencesStaffEngineer tojoin our CloudPlatformTeamand help develop and deployclouds andservices. Working closely with our colleagues inSoftwarePlatform, Datacentre Operations and Product Development teams, you willdeploy services onour fleet ofcutting-edgeAI systems. As part of ourSoftwarePlatform organisation, you will be involved in the cloud integration, validation, performance benchmarking, optimisation, and development of our high-performance AI solutions.These include in-house AI systems alongside off-the-shelf high-performance servers,switchesand storage solutions.This is a hand-ontechnicalrolerequiring a solid background intheuse ofcloudinfrastructure, deployment using Infrastructure-as-Code,observability,high-performancenetworkingand storage systems.You may have been working in an IT organisation, a datacentre, a cloud provider or as a developer of orchestration or cloudservices.

TheSoftwarePlatform team atGraphcore

We buildGraphcoreproductsinto large-scale AI solutions for our customers and the CloudPlatformTeamis responsible forproviding such systemsto bothinternal users via private cloudsand customers viaour ownpublic clouds.Often the internal systems will be using and developing pre-release hardware and software, soit’svital you are comfortable withunproven components.

Responsibilitiesand Duties

• Operate and extend existing OpenStack-basedcloud services and contribute to the deployment and development of new ones.
• Developandoperateend-user services on our clouds and support internal users in their use.You will turnend-user and product requirements into deployed services.
• Help tobuild automation tocollect and analyse metrics and otherobservabilitydatafrom the cloudservicesto supportclearidentification andreporting of any issues.Work with users to provide informationof any product-related issuesto Engineeringand QA departments.
• Work with our Datacentre Operations Engineers tomaintainand operatethe fleet of AI systems at peak performance in our private clouds.
• Configure and test newGraphcoreAIhardware and systemsusingContinuous Deployment andInfrastructure-as-code ininternalandexternal datacentres.
• Drive corrective actions for systems that are notoperatingcorrectly, working withDC operationsandGraphcoreEngineering asrequired.
• Work with external vendors of off-the-shelf switches, servers and storage solutions to specify,benchmarkand integrate 3rdparty products into our Cloud Reference Design.

Skills and Experience(ALL REQUIRED)

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent practical experience in a relevant subject.

• Solidinfrastructureor IT experience with a proventrack recordof delivering technicaloutput as an individual contributor.

• Experience managingoroperatingon-premises or private-cloud environments.

• Experience specifying, scoping, estimating and detailing work plans in an AGILEand SCRUMframework, includingpriorities,risks, issues,impactsand constraints.

• Strongproven Linux scripting ability(bashandpythonrequired).

• Strong proven Linux system administration (Ubuntu, RHEL and variants).

• Experience with a version control system (preferably Git)and using it to manage system configuration or automation.

• Experience with Continuous Integration or testing pipelines using GitLab, GitHub or similar.

• Hands-on experience deploying services into public or private cloudsusing Infrastructure-as-Code(IAC).

• A solid understanding of the technologies underpinning cloud services (APIs,virtualisation of CPUs, IO, systems), virtual networks, block storage, resourcemanagementand monitoring.

• Experience withIACautomation tools (e.g.Terraform/OpenTofu, Ansible, Packer).

• Experience with container deployment and managementtools (e.g. docker,podman,apptainer).

• Experience with solutions for monitoring and observability. e.g.Grafana,Prometheus,OpenSearch/ElasticSearch, Loki, Mimir,OpenTelemetry,Fluentd,Kafka

• Goodcommunication and presentation skills,and experience dealing with end-usersof ITor cloudservices.

• An ability to work independently on critical infrastructure without oversight, and with a focus on end-user availability.

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Desirable but not required:

• Experience with OpenStack deployments or the technologies they rely on (e.g. Ceph, OpenvSwitch, KVM,QEMU ).

• Experience with High Performance Computing (HPC) environments using SLURM or similar batch workload solutions.

• Strong skillset and experience in end-to-enddeployment automation and CIof containerised services. Complete automation ofpipelines forbuild, test, deploy, manage, alert, destroy, rebuild.

• Experience withmanaging productionKubernetesclusters andworkloads.

• Experience with workload queue management systems (SLURM, LSF,Kueue).

• Experience with managed switch configuration (e.g. EOS,SONiC, DNOS).

• ProgrammingexperiencewithPython3 utilising classes and inheritance.

• Programming experiencewithGo.

Benefits

In addition to a competitive salary, Graphcore offers flexible working, a generous annual leave policy, private medical insurance and health cash plan, a dental plan, pension (matched up to 5%), life assurance and income protection. We have a generous parental leave policy and an employee assistance programme (which includes health, mental wellbeing, and bereavement support). We offer a range of healthy food and snacks at our central Bristol office and have our own barista bar! We welcome people of different backgrounds and experiences; we’re committed to building an inclusive work environment that makes Graphcore a great home for everyone. We offer an equal opportunity process and understand that there are visible and invisible differences in all of us. We can provide a flexible approach to interview and encourage you to chat to us if you require any reasonable adjustments.

Sponsorship

Applicants for this position must hold the right to work in the UK. Unfortunately at this time, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship or support for visa applications.