Senior AI Systems Administrator

📋 Job Overview

CommonAI CIC is a non-profit membership organisation, founded on a belief in collaborative engineering for the safe and responsible development of foundational AI technologies. We are seeking a highly skilled Senior AI Systems Administrator to join our rapidly growing engineering team. You will provision and maintain multi-rack GPU server clusters designed for both inference and training workloads.

🏢 About CommonAI CIC

CommonAI CIC is a non-profit membership organisation, founded on a belief in collaborative engineering for the safe and responsible development of foundational AI technologies. A place where AI startups, enterprises large and small, public sector bodies and academia can share resources and knowledge, to codevelop and grow businesses, fast. We are led by experienced founders, investors and engineers who believe that collaborative engineering drives faster AI innovation and are backed by a mix of UK Government and private funding in order to design, build and deploy innovative AI systems.

🎯 The Role

You will be responsible for provisioning and maintaining multi-rack GPU server clusters designed for both inference and training workloads. This role is perfect for a hands-on engineer who thrives on the intersection of cutting-edge high-end hardware and complex software orchestration. You will be given access to cutting edge AI tooling and we encourage our employees to make full use of the latest technology to find innovative and new ways of working.

✅ Key Responsibilities

• Provision and maintain multi-rack GPU server clusters for inference and training workloads
• Deploy, tune, and manage modern GPU servers
• Implement advanced networking technologies (Infiniband, RDMA, RoCE)
• Work with servers running hypervisors/VMs and multiple Linux distributions (e.g., Ubuntu, RHEL)
• Manage source code using tools like Git and infrastructure-as-code tools like Terraform or OpenTofu
• Design and configure network components including switches, routers, and firewalls
• Collaborate with users and stakeholders to iteratively optimise systems

📌 Required Qualifications

• Significant experience as a System Administrator, HPC Engineer, MLOps Engineer, or equivalent
• Modern GPU server deployment, tuning, and management
• Advanced networking technologies (Infiniband, RDMA, RoCE)
• Advanced Linux skills with experience in servers running hypervisors/VMs and multiple distributions
• Expertise in source code management (e.g., Git) and infrastructure-as-code tools (e.g., Terraform, OpenTofu)
• Strong understanding of network design and switch/router/firewall configuration
• Desire to work collaboratively with users and other stakeholders

⭐ Desirable Experience

• High-performance or high-availability storage servers/clusters (Lustre, Ceph, Weka, PEAK:AIO)
• HPC workload managers (Slurm, LSF)
• Proficiency in scripting (e.g., Python)

🎁 Benefits

• A collaborative and supportive work environment
• Opportunity to have a high impact in a growing organisation
• Competitive salary package, including pension and benefits
• Professional development opportunities
• Networking opportunities with influential figures from across the tech sector and academia
• Vibrant office environment located a few minutes’ walk away from Cambridge train station