Senior Systems Engineer AI Infrastructure

About Clockwork Systems

Software Driven Fabrics to increase GPU cluster utilization

Clockwork Systems was founded by Stanford researchers and veteran systems engineers who share a vision for redefining the foundations of distributed computing. As AI workloads grow increasingly complex traditional infrastructure struggles to meet the demands of performance reliability and precise coordination. Clockwork is pioneering a software-driven approach to AI fabrics by delivering cross-stack observability to catch and quickly resolve problems workload fault tolerance to keep jobs running through failures and performance acceleration that dynamically routes and paces traffic to avoid congestion.

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About the Role

Were building infrastructure for fault-tolerant high-performance distributed GPU training. Youll work at the intersection of GPU systems high-speed networking and distributed coordinationdesigning and implementing systems that run at scale.

This is a systems building role. Youll dig into internals understand why things break under pressure and design solutions that handle the messy reality of distributed systems.

What Youll Do

• Design and implement low-level systems software for GPU clusters
• Work with internals of frameworks like PyTorch NCCL CUDA runtimenot as a user but modifying and extending them
• Build components that make large-scale GPU training more reliable and efficient
• Debug complex distributed/concurrent systems where failures are subtle and non-deterministic
• Own systems end-to-end: from design through production

What Were Looking For

Required: Systems building experience

Youve designed and built complex systemsnot just deployed or operated them. Examples:

• Kernel subsystems device drivers or OS-level components
• Distributed storage databases or coordination systems
• Runtimes profilers or performance tooling
• Network stacks protocols or high-performance I/O systems
• Large-scale infrastructure at the systems layer

Core technical skills:

• Strong C/C in systems contexts
• Deep understanding of concurrency memory models.
• Experience reasoning about distributed system behavior: consistency ordering partial failures
• Comfortable reading and modifying large unfamiliar codebases

Nice to have:

• GPU programming (CUDA) or GPU systems experience
• High-performance networking (RDMA InfiniBand)
• ML framework or runtime internals
• Cluster scheduling or orchestration systems

We believe strong systems engineers pick up domain-specific tools quickly. We value your ability to reason about complex systems over checkbox familiarity with our specific stack.

Enjoy

• Challenging projects.
• A friendly and inclusive workplace culture.
• Competitive compensation.
• A great benefits package.
• Catered lunch.

Compensation for this position will vary based on the skills and experience you bring as well as internal equity considerations. For candidates hired at the posted level the expected base salary range is $150000 - $210000. In addition to cash compensation this role is eligible to participate in the companys equity program which may include stock options granted in accordance with the companys equity plan and subject to approval and applicable vesting schedules.

Clockwork Systems is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to building world-class teams by welcoming bright passionate individuals from all backgrounds. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race color ancestry religion age sex sexual orientation gender identity or expression national origin disability or protected veteran status. We believe diversity drives innovation and we grow stronger together.

Required Experience:

Senior IC