We are looking for a Senior Network & Interconnect Engineer. The successful candidate will design, deploy, and operate production-grade InfiniBand and AI-optimized Ethernet fabrics, ensuring scalability, performance, and reliability for research institutions and enterprise customers across Italy and Europe.
The role involves designing and operating Spine-Leaf datacenter fabrics (InfiniBand and Ethernet with BGP/EVPN/VXLAN), leading technical escalations with NVIDIA Networking, and evaluating next-generation interconnect technologies such as DPUs, CXL fabrics, photonic networking, and Ultra Ethernet.
Key Responsibilities:
- Design datacenter fabric and HPC interconnect end-to-end: topology selection (fat-tree, dragonfly, rail-optimized), oversubscription, bisection bandwidth targets, failure-domain design, and integration with storage backends (Ceph, VAST, WEKA, BeeGFS over IB / RoCE).
- Bring up, tune, troubleshoot, and operate InfiniBand XDR / NDR (Quantum-3 / Quantum-2) and Ethernet AI-optimized fabrics: subnet manager (OpenSM) configuration, partitioning, QoS, adaptive routing, congestion control, and performance counters.
- Design and operate Spine-Leaf datacenter fabrics with BGP / EVPN / VXLAN , multi-fabric and multi-site interconnect, across switch ecosystems including Mellanox SN, SONiC, Dell OS10 etc.
- Own the physical layer of AI Factory and HPC cluster networking: optical cabling design (BiDi, parallel optics, DAC, AOC), OOB management, patching matrix, and power and space planning in collaboration with the Operations and Facilities teams.
- Instrument fabric observability: sFlow, IPFIX, streaming telemetry (gNMI), Prometheus exporters for switch fabric; correlate with the team’s monitoring stack and drive capacity planning.
- Contribute to R&D and presales initiatives: author the networking sections of EuroHPC JU and EU bids; participate in technology scouting on DPU (BlueField-3+), CXL fabric, photonic interconnect, and Ultra Ethernet Consortium developments.
- Write and maintain runbooks — step-by-step operational procedures with explicit go / no-go gates and rollback paths — for fabric bring-up, upgrade, and incident response workflows.
- Mentor junior and mid-level engineers in the team on advanced networking and fabric operations.
Education:
Master’s degree or Ph.D. in Telecommunications, Computer Networks, Computer Science, or a related STEM field — or equivalent practical experience, including:
- 4+ years of hands-on engineering experience in datacenter networking and high-speed interconnect.
- 2+ years of direct experience operating InfiniBand fabrics in production (subnet management, troubleshooting, performance tuning).
- 2+ years of hands-on Spine-Leaf datacenter fabric design and operations at scale (BGP / EVPN).
SKILLS AND COMPETENCES
Core Technical Skills:
- InfiniBand: Mellanox HCA (ConnectX-6 / 7 / 8, BlueField), Quantum-2 / 3 switches, OpenSM configuration and tuning, IB performance counters, IB-to-Ethernet gateway.
- Ethernet AI fabric: Spectrum-X, RoCEv2 with DCQCN / HPCC, PFC tuning, adaptive routing, congestion control.
- Network protocols: BGP (including EVPN), OSPF, MP-BGP, VXLAN, Geneve, MLAG, MC-LAG, RSTP, LLDP.
- Linux networking: netlink, tc qdisc, eBPF for networking, XDP basics.
- Automation & Infrastructure as Code: Python (production quality), Ansible with custom modules and Bash scripting. Go is a plus.
- Problem-Solving & Documentation: Systematic troubleshooting methodology across hardware, firmware, driver, and OS layers. Ability to write design documents, RCA reports, and runbooks.
- Communication: Fluent English (working language with Mellanox / NVIDIA / Dell engineering); clear written and verbal communication for vendor, customer, and internal audiences.
Nice-to-Have Skills:
Fabric management & orchestration platforms
- NVIDIA UFM (Enterprise / Telemetry / Cyber-AI) for InfiniBand fabric management and anomaly detection.
- NVIDIA NetQ for Cumulus / SONiC fabric telemetry.
- Dorado Cruz (Cruz Fabric Controller / Operations Center) for multi-vendor SONiC fabric orchestration.
- Exposure to intent-based platforms such as Juniper Apstra, Cisco Nexus Dashboard, or Arista CloudVision.
Soft Skills:
- Strong technical leadership and team coordination skills.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder management abilities.
- Mentoring mindset with a passion for developing team members.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
- Ability to prioritize, organize, and deliver results in dynamic environments.
- Collaborative approach with experience working across cross-functional teams.
- Proactive attitude, strong sense of ownership, and commitment to continuous improvement.
- Adaptability and resilience in fast-paced, mission-critical environments.
Working environment:
- Remote work — Flexibility to work from anywhere in Italy, with no hybrid mandate; on-site presence required only about once a month, with travel covered by the company.
- Objective-based work — Clear, measurable objectives reviewed and updated throughout the year, with a structured growth path and access to cutting-edge interconnect technology in production.
- On-site missions — The role involves periodic on-site engagements at customer and partner facilities in Italy and across the EU (cluster bring-up, vendor PoC, co-deployment), with travel covered by the company.
- RAL : 50.000,00 €
Early Career Opportunities
While this position targets experienced engineers, we are also building the next generation of networking specialists . If you have a solid technical foundation, strong curiosity, and a passion for high-performance networking, we encourage you to apply even if you do not yet meet every requirement. Junior engineers will have the opportunity to grow through mentorship.
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