AI Cluster Architect

About the role

Vultr is seeking an AI Cluster Architect to design and optimize large-scale GPU clusters within strict power and infrastructure limits. The ideal candidate should have 7+ years of experience in designing or building large-scale HPC, AI, or hyperscale GPU clusters.

Responsibilities

• Architect large-scale GPU clusters within fixed site power budgets that optimize for maximum GPU density while reserving necessary headroom for compute services, storage, and networking.
• Model and validate power consumption across the full cluster bill of materials (GPUs, CPUs, NICs, switches, fabric components, storage, and facility limits).
• Evaluate tradeoffs across multiple fabric networking architectures (InfiniBand, RoCE, SpectrumX) as well as multi-plane, 2-tier/3-tier, and rail-optimized topologies.
• Determine network scale limits based on switch radix, link speed, topology, and blocking requirements.
• Gather, interpret, and maintain detailed SKU-level power and thermal specifications for GPUs, NICs, switches, DPUs, storage, and server platforms.
• Develop power-aware cluster configuration templates and capacity-planning models that can scale across sites with varying constraints and allow for quick iteration and ideation.
• Document architecture, design choices, tradeoff analyses, and operational considerations for deployment and lifecycle management.
• Provide guidance on future-proofing, including the ability to incorporate next-gen GPUs, NICs, or fabrics.
• Collaborate with vendors on novel fabric architectures that enable large-scale cluster deployments (100k+ GPUs).

Qualifications

• Expert understanding of GPU and accelerator system design, including node topology, PCIe/NVLink/NVSwitch/ROCm, and NIC-to-GPU affinity considerations.
• Strong familiarity with InfiniBand, RoCE, and SpectrumX networking, including multi-tier, multi-plane, Clos/dragonfly variants, and large-radix switch design.
• Demonstrated experience modeling power draw and thermal characteristics of servers, GPUs, NICs, switches, optics, and storage systems.
• Ability to design networks that maintain full non-blocking performance or intentionally introduce over/under-subscription while understanding impacts on workload performance.
• Proven ability to gather and analyze vendor SKU-level specifications and incorporate them into scalable cluster architectures.
• Experience balancing customer-driven requirements for compute, storage, and service density in combination with overall GPU count.
• Strong documentation, communication, and cross-functional collaboration skills.

Pay

$165,000 - $185,000