Senior Forward Deployed Solution Engineer

Accountabilities: You will serve as a senior technical lead throughout complex customer engagements, taking responsibility for translating requirements into deployable architectures and ensuring that solutions deliver lasting operational and business value. Lead technical discovery with customers, translating business objectives, operational constraints, and mission requirements into practical technical architectures and deployment plans. Design, deploy, upgrade, and troubleshoot production Kubernetes clusters and cloud-native applications across public cloud, bare-metal, datacenter, and edge environments. Build automation, integrations, infrastructure tooling, and maintainable software to support repeatable deployments and reliable operations. Guide customer implementations from initial working capabilities through production readiness, scaled adoption, and operational handoff. Work across Kubernetes platforms, cloud infrastructure, Linux systems, GPU-enabled environments, data pipelines, and high-performance networking technologies. Design and support infrastructure for AI workloads, including GPU provisioning, drivers, container runtimes, Kubernetes scheduling, telemetry, and workload frameworks. Support the implementation and operation of AI data and model workflows, from data ingestion and preparation through deployment, inference, monitoring, and feedback. Troubleshoot complex distributed systems and networking issues, including routing, switching, DNS, load balancing, overlays, latency, bandwidth, congestion, and packet-level problems. Apply infrastructure-as-code, configuration automation, CI/CD, and GitOps practices to improve deployment consistency and operational efficiency. Address Kubernetes security and multi-tenancy requirements, including access controls, network policies, admission controls, resource quotas, secrets management, and tenant isolation. Collaborate with customer engineers, operators, technical leaders, and executives, clearly communicating architectural decisions, tradeoffs, delivery status, and emerging risks. Work closely with other forward-deployed engineering resources and deployment strategy stakeholders to coordinate technical execution and customer outcomes. Identify delivery risks early, communicate changes directly, and prioritize work to maintain progress in complex or evolving environments. Document architectures, configurations, operational procedures, and lessons learned to support customer independence and future deployments. Share implementation feedback with Product and Engineering teams, helping improve platform capabilities, automation, reference architectures, and deployment practices. Travel onsite to customer locations when needed for discovery, deployment, testing, and key operational milestones. Requirements The ideal candidate combines strong Kubernetes and infrastructure engineering expertise with software development skills and sound customer-facing judgment. You should be comfortable moving between code, architecture, infrastructure, networking, and stakeholder discussions while maintaining a clear focus on customer outcomes. Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience. At least 6 years of professional experience in software engineering, platform engineering, site reliability engineering, DevOps, infrastructure engineering, solutions engineering, or a comparable customer-facing technical role. Production experience designing, deploying, upgrading, and troubleshooting Kubernetes clusters and cloud-native applications. Strong Linux and distributed-systems fundamentals, including processes, networking, storage, identity, certificates, resource management, and failure analysis. Proficiency in at least one modern programming language, preferably Go or Python, with the ability to develop maintainable, tested, production-quality code. Hands-on experience with infrastructure as code and configuration automation tools such as Terraform, Ansible, Cluster API, Helm, and Kustomize, or equivalent technologies. Experience implementing CI/CD or GitOps workflows using tools such as GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, Argo CD, or Flux. Working knowledge of Kubernetes security and multi-tenancy, including RBAC, namespaces, network policies, admission controls, quotas, secrets, pod security, and tenant isolation. Experience with at least one major public cloud provider and at least one datacenter deployment model, such as bare metal, VMware, KubeVirt, Proxmox, or OpenStack. Working knowledge of GPU-enabled infrastructure, including firmware, drivers, CUDA, container runtimes, Kubernetes scheduling, device plugins, telemetry, and workload frameworks. Understanding of the AI data and model lifecycle, from data ingestion through model deployment, inference, monitoring, and feedback. Strong networking fundamentals, including TCP/IP, routing, switching, DNS, BGP, load balancing, overlays, MTU, latency, bandwidth, congestion, and packet-level troubleshooting. Familiarity with high-performance AI networking concepts such as RDMA, RoCE, InfiniBand, SR-IOV, GPUDirect, and collective communication. Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain architecture, technical tradeoffs, project status, and risks to engineers, operators, executives, and nontechnical stakeholders. Demonstrated ability to navigate ambiguous requirements, prioritize effectively, and deliver incremental value in a fast-moving environment. Willingness and ability to work onsite with customers for discovery, deployment, testing, and operational milestones. Authorization to work in the United States and ability to meet customer-specific access requirements. The following qualifications are considered strong advantages: 8 or more years of relevant experience, including ownership of complex production deployments or strategic customer programs. Direct experience with Palette, PaletteAI, Cluster API, Kubernetes fleet management, edge Kubernetes, or declarative full-stack lifecycle platforms. Current CKA, CKS, CKAD, or relevant cloud, networking, security, or NVIDIA certifications. Production experience designing or operating NVIDIA Cloud Partner (NCP) or comparable multi-tenant GPU cloud environments. Deep expertise in tenant isolation across bare-metal infrastructure, virtual machines, Kubernetes control planes, GPU resources, storage, and high-performance networks. Hands-on experience with NVIDIA GPU Operator, Network Operator, DCGM, MIG, vGPU, NIM, Triton, TensorRT-LLM, vLLM, NCCL, or NVIDIA AI Enterprise. Experience with GPU schedulers and AI platform technologies such as Run, Slurm, Volcano, KAI, Ray, Kubeflow, or ClearML. Experience with distributed training or high-throughput inference using H100, H200, B200, GB200, GB300, or other modern accelerator platforms. Hands-on experience designing or operating NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet fabrics, Quantum InfiniBand, ConnectX adapters, BlueField DPUs or SuperNICs, DOCA, or comparable high-speed, low-latency networking technologies. Experience configuring or troubleshooting GPUDirect RDMA, GPUDirect Storage, RDMA, RoCE, PFC, ECN, ECMP, SR-IOV, Multus, InfiniBand partitions, and topology-aware scheduling. Experience building or operating SONiC or Cumulus Linux leaf-spine fabrics, including FRR, BGP, EVPN/VXLAN, VRF, zero-touch provisioning, automated validation, upgrades, and telemetry. Experience integrating BlueField in DPU or restricted modes for network, security, storage, isolation, or telemetry offload, as well as familiarity with DPU provisioning, BMC, Redfish, attestation, and lifecycle management. Experience with high-performance storage and AI data platforms, including object storage, NVMe-oF, parallel file systems, data lakes, streaming, feature stores, vector databases, model registries, and metadata or lineage systems. Experience working in disconnected, air-gapped, sovereign, regulated, safety-sensitive, or classified environments. A record of contributing reusable software, open-source projects, reference architectures, technical publications, or customer enablement materials. Benefits Fully remote position within the United States. Opportunity to work on advanced technologies spanning Kubernetes, cloud infrastructure, GPU systems, AI platforms, and high-performance networking. Direct involvement in complex, high-impact customer deployments and strategic technical initiatives. Broad technical ownership and the opportunity to influence customer architectures and operational outcomes. Close collaboration with experienced Field Engineering, Product, and Engineering teams. Opportunity to contribute to reusable software, automation, reference architectures, and improvements to future customer deployments. A collaborative, diverse, and fast-paced work environment that encourages innovation, professional growth, and meaningful technical contributions.