Member of Technical Staff

About Vulcan Vector

GPU capacity is valuable when researchers can use it with confidence. Getting there takes more than servers: it takes a validated fabric, a dependable data path, sensible scheduling and someone who owns the operating details.

Vulcan Vector builds and manages that foundation. Yggdrasil brings bare-metal validation, storage, Kubernetes, Slurm, access and observability into a service for AI startups and research labs. We want researchers to spend their time on experiments while we take care of the systems beneath them.

The engineering challenge

You’ll build and improve Yggdrasil’s cluster foundation. That includes writing software, investigating host behaviour, testing data paths and making deployment procedures repeatable. The work moves between the kernel, the fabric, storage and the scheduler; you should enjoy following a problem across those boundaries.

What you’ll own

• A repeatable host baseline. Turn firmware, operating-system and driver requirements into reviewable configuration and provisioning workflows. Keep the resulting inventory and compatibility assumptions explicit.
• Evidence that the hardware is ready. Build acceptance tests for GPU nodes and distributed workloads. Investigate device errors, thermal behaviour, PCIe paths and inconsistent results before a cluster enters service.
• A fast, understood data path. Profile interactions between compute, network and storage. Validate RDMA connectivity and investigate dataset loading, checkpoint traffic and collective operations.
• A usable compute platform. Implement Kubernetes and Slurm deployment paths with appropriate accounting, resource limits, QoS and researcher access. Integrate the selected NFS, Ceph, WEKA or VAST storage design.
• Tools that survive the next deployment. Write maintainable automation and supporting services. Add meaningful tests, safe rollout steps and documentation so a fix becomes part of the platform.
• Clear engineering decisions. Explain tradeoffs, review changes and work through technical issues with customers and the people operating their infrastructure.

The experience that matters

• Linux systems knowledge. You can investigate process, memory, filesystem, networking and device behaviour rather than treating the host as a black box.
• Software you can stand behind. You have shipped automation or systems software, can explain its design and can work effectively in Go, Python or another suitable language.
• A performance mindset. You can frame a hypothesis, choose useful measurements and distinguish a configuration problem from a resource or hardware bottleneck.
• Distributed infrastructure experience. You have built or substantially operated a clustered environment involving orchestration, scheduling, storage or high-speed networking.
• Careful execution. You use version control, review and validation to make infrastructure changes understandable and recoverable.

Other useful experience

• GPU host configuration, NVIDIA drivers, CUDA tooling, NCCL or hardware diagnostics.
• RDMA networking, InfiniBand, RoCE or topology-aware performance investigation.
• Kernel tracing, eBPF, device passthrough, BIOS/UEFI, or development in C or Rust.
• Production Kubernetes, Slurm, shared storage or bare-metal provisioning.

Bring a system you know deeply: what you built, where it broke, how you measured it and what you changed. We care about the quality of your engineering decisions and the work you can explain.

What makes the work worthwhile

Work directly on the infrastructure that enables research, with responsibility for both the implementation and its behaviour in operation. Help shape Yggdrasil’s tools and practices through engineering work that gets used.

• Competitive salary, with compensation discussed early in the process.
• Technical work spanning physical hardware and the software researchers depend on.
• Room to improve the way the platform is built, validated and operated.

Location & compensation

This role is based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Working arrangements and any production-support responsibilities will be discussed during the hiring process.

Salary will reflect the role, experience and hiring location. We’ll discuss the details directly.

Let’s talk about your work

Our process starts with a conversation, followed by a technical discussion grounded in your experience. We’ll explain the next steps and leave time for your questions. You don’t need every optional skill to start the conversation.

We welcome different routes into systems engineering. Tell us if you need an accommodation during the hiring process.