Senior Infrastructure Engineer (OpenStack Ironic Specialist)

Job description

## About Nscale Nscale is the GPU cloud engineered for AI. We provide cost-effective, high-performance infrastructure for AI start-ups and large enterprise customers. Nscale enables AI-focused companies to achieve superior results by reducing the complexity of AI development. Our GPU cloud bolsters technical capabilities and directly supports strategic business outcomes, including cost management, rapid innovation, and environmental responsibility. We thrive on a culture of relentless innovation, ownership, and accountability, where every team member takes pride in their work and drives it with excellence and urgency. As an Nscaler, you’ll build trust through openness and transparency, where everyone is inspired to do their best work. If you join our team, you’ll be contributing to building the technology that powers the future. ## About the Role We’re hiring an ****Infrastructure Engineer (OpenStack Ironic Specialist)**** to design, operate, and continuously improve the bare metal provisioning platforms that underpin Nscale’s infrastructure. This role sits within the ****Infrastructure Engineering team****, which is responsible for the design, implementation, operation, and ongoing improvement of the infrastructure stack supporting both internal and customer-facing services. You’ll work closely with ****network, compute, data centre, support, and pre-sales teams****, while also serving as a specialist escalation point for advanced provisioning and hardware issues. This is a high-impact role focused on ****OpenStack Ironic****, automated hardware lifecycle management, and the reliable operation of large-scale physical infrastructure. You’ll also help connect Nscale to the broader ****upstream OpenStack community****, ensuring our bare metal platforms evolve in line with real operational needs and industry direction. ## What you'll be doing ****Bare Metal Provisioning & Lifecycle Management**** - ****Design**** scalable and resilient bare metal provisioning platforms with a strong focus on ****OpenStack Ironic****. - ****Own**** the full lifecycle of physical infrastructure, including discovery, enrolment, provisioning, cleaning, deprovisioning, and hardware state management. - ****Build**** and maintain provisioning workflows for a wide range of hardware profiles, including ****GPU-enabled**** and high-performance server platforms. - ****Support**** platform upgrades, lifecycle management, and operational improvements across ****Ironic**** and its dependencies. ****Automation & Platform Integration**** - ****Manage**** and improve integrations between ****Ironic**** and related OpenStack services such as ****Nova, Neutron, Glance, Keystone, and Placement****. - ****Drive**** automation for hardware onboarding, firmware and BIOS configuration, deployment workflows, validation, and recovery. - ****Implement**** infrastructure automation using ****infrastructure-as-code**** and configuration management approaches. - ****Ensure**** provisioning platforms and operational processes align with security, compliance, and operational standards. ****Troubleshooting, Reliability & Operational Support**** - ****Troubleshoot**** complex issues across provisioning pipelines, ****PXE/iPXE****, BMC interfaces, out-of-band management, image deployment, network boot, and hardware compatibility. - ****Act**** as a ****3rd/4th line escalation point**** for advanced bare metal and provisioning incidents. - ****Perform**** root cause analysis and implement long-term fixes to improve platform reliability and repeatability. - ****Participate**** in on-call rotations and incident response activities for critical infrastructure services. ****Cross-Functional Collaboration & Community Engagement**** - ****Collaborate**** with network, compute, data centre, and support teams to deliver reliable physical infrastructure services. - ****Contribute**** specialist input to infrastructure roadmap planning, capacity expansion, standard builds, and hardware platform qualification. - ****Support**** pre-sales and solution design efforts with expert guidance on bare metal capabilities, operational models, and deployment constraints. - ****Contribute**** to upstream OpenStack bare metal communities through bug reports, testing, reviews, design discussions, and code contributions where appropriate. - ****Track**** upstream roadmaps and release changes to help shape Nscale’s bare metal strategy, upgrade planning, and platform standards. ## KPIs - ****Automated provisioning and hardware onboarding reliability**** - ****Bare metal incident resolution and root cause closure**** - ****Platform upgrade and lifecycle delivery across Ironic dependencies**** - ****Upstream OpenStack Ironic community contribution and adoption alignment**** ## About You - ****Strong experience**** operating Linux systems and troubleshooting production infrastructure - ****Strong specialist knowledge**** of ****OpenStack Ironic**** and the surrounding provisioning ecosystem - ****Strong understanding**** of bare metal provisioning concepts including ****PXE/iPXE, DHCP, TFTP/HTTP boot, BMC technologies, RAID configuration, firmware management, disk imaging, and node lifecycle states**** - ****Strong experience**** with out-of-band management technologies such as ****Redfish, IPMI, or vendor management interfaces**** - ****Strong experience**** designing and building automation for physical and virtual infrastructure using tools such as ****Ansible**** - ****Strong scripting skills**** in ****Python and Bash**** - ****Experience**** troubleshooting complex provisioning and hardware integration issues across server, network, and management layers - ****Experience**** operating infrastructure at scale with a focus on reliability, repeatability, and operational safety - ****Ability**** to collaborate across infrastructure, support, and architecture teams to solve complex technical problems - ****Experience**** contributing to or working closely with upstream open-source communities, particularly ****OpenStack, Ironic, Metal3, or related infrastructure projects****, is highly desirable ## What we can offer you At Nscale, you'll find a collaborative, supportive, and innovative environment where your contributions spark real impact. We're building something extraordinary, and we want you at the core. Highly competitive US compensation package (base + bonus + equity), with performance reviews every 12 months. 🚀 Join one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure companies — your chance to directly shape how global AI capacity is planned and deployed. ✨ Expect a dynamic progression plan tailored to your ambitions. Grow by leading critical cross-functional initiatives and shaping capital strategy — always with our full support. Human-First Flexibility: We treat you as humans first. 🫶🏽 Our flexible workplace trusts Nscalers to deliver, giving you the autonomy to shape your day around life's moments. ## Equal Opportunities Statement We strongly encourage applications from people of colour, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, neurodivergent people, parents, carers, and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. If there’s anything we can do to accommodate your specific situation, please let us know. The responsibilities outlined in this job description are not exhaustive and are intended to provide a general overview of the position. The employee may be required to perform additional duties, tasks, and responsibilities as assigned by management, consistent with the skills and qualifications required for the role. For information on how Nscale handles candidate personal data, please see our Employee & Candidate Privacy Notice: Here. For information on how Nscale handles candidate personal data, please see our Employee & Candidate Privacy Notice: Here. ## Salary Range The range below reflects the base salary for the position. Actual compensation may vary based on job-related factors such as skill set, experience, education, and location. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for bonus, equity, and/or commission programs. Nscale may offer a competitive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, flexible paid time off, parental leave, and retirement plan participation. *For information on how Nscale handles candidate personal data, please see our Employee & Candidate Privacy Notice: [Here.](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QK5Yg04WHD9K9IAtJgQWubJZC9oLvatK/view?usp=sharing)*