Principal Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure

NVIDIA, US, CA, Santa Clara

The role

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to drive the architecture and development of our bare-metal and cloud compute infrastructure. Our organization supports hundreds of megawatts of datacenter capacity, making a growing physical fleet available as reliable, secure, and efficient compute services for NVIDIA engineering.

We operate an NVIDIA GPU Private cloud that provides infrastructure for continuous integration and validation. Hardware, firmware, drivers, networking, and system software are coordinated and tested on their path to production. The fleet includes x86 and Arm servers, GPUs, DPUs, high-speed networking, storage, and rack-scale systems. Platforms include Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin. In this senior individual contributor role, you will combine hands-on software engineering with architectural leadership.

You will evolve our OpenStack platform, automate infrastructure operations, and address complex systems challenges across multiple datacenters.

All jobs

Principal Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure

NVIDIA, US, CA, Santa Clara

The role

You will evolve our OpenStack platform, automate infrastructure operations, and address complex systems challenges across multiple datacenters.

What you need

15+ years of proven experience in software engineering, distributed systems, or cloud infrastructure, demonstrating leadership in diverse technical initiatives across teams. BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Deep experience crafting, developing, deploying, and fixing production OpenStack environments, particularly Nova, Neutron, and Ironic.
Strong software development skills in Python and experience building maintainable services, APIs, and infrastructure automation.
Strong understanding of distributed systems, including concurrency, state management, asynchronous workflows, failure handling, and recovery.
Deep Linux systems knowledge and experience with virtualization, KVM/QEMU, containers, and guest operating-system provisioning.
Proven understanding of cloud networking, including L2/L3 networking, VLANs, overlays, DHCP, PXE boot, routing, and tenant isolation.
Experience with databases and messaging infrastructure supporting cloud control planes, such as MySQL/MariaDB and RabbitMQ.
Experience operating infrastructure with demanding reliability requirements, including monitoring, incident response, system resources, and production upgrades.
Excellent debugging skills across hardware, firmware, operating systems, communication systems, data storage, and distributed services.
Ability to translate ambiguous requirements into technical direction and influence engineering teams across organizational boundaries and time zones.

Ways to stand out from the crowd

Contributions to OpenStack or related open-source projects, including upstream features, bug fixes, performance improvements, or architectural proposals.
Experience scaling OpenStack across multiple regions or datacenters, including control-plane resilience, fleet upgrades, and workload migration.
Expertise in Ironic, Redfish, BMC integration, and provisioning or recovering large bare-metal fleets. Experience with Ceph, distributed storage, and storage integration with OpenStack.
Experience with GPU and Arm platforms, PCIe pass-through, SR-IOV, NVLink, InfiniBand, or high-speed Ethernet.
A record of delivering architectural improvements that measurably increase reliability, scalability, utilization, or developer efficiency.

NVIDIA brings together engineers working on some of the most ambitious problems in computing. Join us to build the infrastructure that enables the next generation of NVIDIA hardware and software. Widely considered to be one of the technology world’s most desirable employers, NVIDIA offers highly competitive salaries and a comprehensive benefits package. As you plan your future, see what we can offer to you and your family www.nvidiabenefits.com/

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and other objective job-related factors. The expected base salary range for this position is 272,000 USD – 431,250 USD.

You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until November 13, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

Principal Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure

The role

Principal Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure

The role

What you will do

What you need

Ways to stand out from the crowd

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NVIDIA