Staff Engineer, HPC Infrastructure

We're seeking a Staff HPC Engineer who thrives on turning hundreds of bare-metal compute nodes into consistent, production-ready clusters through automation and infrastructure-as-code. You'll design and maintain OS deployment pipelines that provision nodes in minutes, use Ansible to eliminate configuration drift across global sites, and ensure RHEL/Ubuntu systems stay performant and reliable as our compute demands scale exponentially. In semiconductor design, where millions of EDA jobs run daily, your automation work directly translates to faster design cycles and higher cluster utilization.

This role is hybrid, based out of Austin, TX, Santa Clara, CA, or Toronto, CA.

We welcome candidates at various experience levels for this role. During the interview process, candidates will be assessed for the appropriate level, and offers will align with that level, which may differ from the one in this posting.

Who You Are

• Deep experience with IBM Spectrum LSF or similar workload managers.
• Strong background in commercial HPC storage platforms such as Pure Storage FlashBlade, Weka, NetApp, etc.
• Hands-on experience with container technologies (Docker, Singularity, Podman).
• Solid Linux system administration skills.
• Understanding of HPC networking, storage architectures, and job scheduling.
• Ability to diagnose and resolve complex infrastructure issues independently.
• Comfortable working in a startup environment with rapidly changing requirements.

What We Need

• Design and maintain automated bare-metal provisioning pipelines that deploy hundreds of compute nodes globally with consistent configurations.
• Implement infrastructure-as-code practices using Ansible to manage large-scale OS configuration across diverse hardware platforms.
• Own the lifecycle management of RHEL and Ubuntu systems—from initial deployment through patching, upgrades, and performance tuning.
• Build automation and tooling to streamline provisioning, patching, and system updates as the compute environment scales.
• Troubleshoot OS-level issues, optimize kernel parameters, and resolve system performance bottlenecks that impact EDA workflows.
• Work directly with hardware design teams to standardize system configurations, toolchains, and development environments.
• Deploy and lifecycle manage systems across Tenstorrent's global engineering sites, ensuring consistency and reliability.

Nice to Have

• Experience supporting EDA tools and hardware design workflows in production HPC environments.
• Hands-on expertise with commercial HPC storage platforms (Pure Storage, Weka, NetApp) and workload managers (LSF, Slurm).
• Container technologies (Docker, Singularity, Podman) for reproducible compute environments at scale.
• Advanced provisioning techniques (PXE boot, kickstart, cloud-init) and modern infrastructure automation patterns.
• Cluster monitoring and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana) for managing thousands of compute nodes.
• Security hardening and compliance frameworks for multi-tenant semiconductor design environments.
• Integration of open-source and commercial tools to improve provisioning efficiency and reliability.
• Work in a deeply technical environment solving infrastructure challenges that directly impact chip design velocity.

Compensation for all engineers at Tenstorrent ranges from $100k - $500k including base and variable compensation targets. Experience, skills, education, background and location all impact the actual offer made.

Tenstorrent offers a highly competitive compensation package and benefits, and we are an equal opportunity employer.