Senior Network Engineer
What We’re Looking For
Lightning AI is seeking a Senior Network Engineer with hands-on Cumulus Linux expertise to build and scale the network backbone behind our AI infrastructure platform. You’ll play a critical role in designing highly reliable, automated data center networks that support some of the most demanding AI workloads in the world.
This role is hybrid with a minimum of 2 in-office days per week in San Francisco, Seattle, or NYC, with fully remote work considered for candidates outside of our office hub locations. All employees participate in occasional team and company offsites.
What You'll Do
Design and deploy scalable spine/leaf network architectures for AI data centers
Engineer high-performance Ethernet fabrics supporting GPU clusters and AI workloads
Build and maintain EVPN/VXLAN, BGP, and high-speed routing environments
Optimize east-west traffic flows for AI training and inference operations
Support RoCE/RDMA networking and low-latency transport technologies
Support backbone, DCI, WAN, and edge connectivity solutions.
Collaborate with compute, storage, AI platform, and operations teams to deliver integrated infrastructure solutions
Develop automation and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) solutions for network provisioning and operations
Troubleshoot complex network, performance, and congestion issues across distributed environments
Improve network observability, telemetry, and operational visibility
You have hands-on experience working with SONiC and Junos.
Experience with cloud networking technologies including VPC’s, NFV, Direct Connect, Cloud Connect
You enjoy working with a small group of friendly, highly motivated, high-execution colleagues
You’re comfortable with a high degree of autonomy, can independently prioritize your work and understand how it maps to the overall needs and goals of the company
You’re knowledgeable in your domain but also enjoy wearing multiple hats and venturing outside of your comfort zone when the need arises
You value the ability to write well and understand the importance of good documentation
What You’ll Need
Required Qualifications
Experience with Cumulus NOS
5+ years of experience in large-scale data center networking
Experience in spine-leaf architectures and L3 fabrics
Experience with BGP, EVPN, VXLAN
Experience operating high-performance computing (HPC) or GPU-dense environments
Experience designing networks for hyperscalers, neoclouds, or high-scale SaaS infrastructure
Experience in automation with (Python, Ansible, Terraform, or similar)
Experience with network observability tooling and telemetry pipelines
Proven ability to design systems that scale to thousands of nodes
Strong documentation and communication skills
Ideal Experience
Familiarity with NVIDIA networking (Spectrum, Quantum, BlueField, etc.)
Familiarity with RDMA, RoCE, or InfiniBand fabrics
Experience with multi-region backbone design
Exposure to bare-metal provisioning systems
Experience working in high-growth infrastructure startups
Compensation
We are committed to offering competitive compensation that reflects the value each team member brings to our mission. Final offers are based on factors such as experience, skills, geographic location, and role expectations. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package for eligible roles includes a discretionary bonus, a meaningful equity component, and comprehensive benefits.
The anticipated annual base salary range for this role is:
$150,000—$190,000 USD