Job Description

Role Summary

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Firmus is seeking a highly skilled and driven Kubernetes HPC Engineer to join our Software Defined Infrastructure team. In this role, you will build high-performance, fault-tolerant, and reliable infrastructure to support bare-metal provisioning, performance benchmarking, and platform validation.

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You will be instrumental in ensuring the stability, performance, and continuous improvement of our complex and mission-critical bare-metal HPC GPU clusters.

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Key Responsibilities

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- Design and implement bare-metal provisioning workflows using Ironic and Kubernetes CRDs.
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- Deploy and manage GPU-enabled AI compute nodes with RDMA, InfiniBand, and RoCE networking.
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- Optimise Kubernetes and Slurm platforms for multi-node AI training performance, including NCCL, UCX, GPUDirect, and fabric tuning.
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- Implement Kubernetes primitives for GPU scheduling, isolation, and resource management models.
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- Design, deploy, and fine-tune Slurm GPU clusters with topology-aware configurations.
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- Develop and execute performance benchmarking workloads, including MLPerf, NCCL tests, microbenchmarks, and throughput/latency validation.
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- Establish observability across GPU, InfiniBand fabric, storage, and provisioning components.
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- Document architecture designs, operational procedures, and performance results.
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- Collaborate with L2 SRE engineers, site operations, and networking teams to ensure platform reliability, reproducibility, and performance.
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- Support hardware bring-up activities, including BIOS tuning, GPU topology verification, NUMA alignment, and PCIe/NVLink checks.
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- Contribute to continuous improvement in cluster validation, CI/CD automation,



and provisioning and testing frameworks.
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- Contribute to the development of custom Kubernetes operators and intelligent orchestration frameworks that optimise AI workload performance for large-scale GPU cluster commissioning.
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Skills & Experience

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- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field.
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- Experience with bare-metal cluster provisioning using tools such as Metal3, OpenStack Ironic, MaaS, xCAT, or similar.
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- Deep knowledge of Kubernetes internals, including CRDs, controllers, operators, and cluster lifecycle management.
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- Strong understanding of Slurm configuration and compiling AI and HPC applications.
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- Robust understanding of GPU systems (NVIDIA H100/H200 SXM platforms), CUDA/NCCL, and GPU topology (NVLink, NVSwitch, PCIe).
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- Familiarity with container runtimes for compute workloads, including Docker, Enroot, Singularity, and Podman.
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- Experience with benchmarking and performance validation for AI, HPC, or distributed training workloads.
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- Practical Linux systems engineering experience, including kernel, cgroups, system services, networking, and drivers.
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- Strong automation mindset using tools such as Ansible, Helm, Terraform/OpenTofu, or equivalent.
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- Understanding of firmware, BIOS, BMC/IPMI/Redfish, and low-level system tuning.
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- Proficiency in one or more programming languages such as Go, Bash, Rust, or Python.
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- Excellent documentation skills with strong attention to detail.
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- Experience participating in an on‐call rotation supporting production services.
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- Proactive self-starter with a drive for continuous technical improvement.
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Key Competencies

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- Systems Architecture: Ability to design and integrate bare-metal, GPU, RDMA, and Kubernetes/Slurm platforms.
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- Infrastructure Automation: Skilled in automated provisioning and lifecycle management of hardware and clusters.
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- GPU and HPC Performance: Understanding of GPU systems, RDMA fabrics, and distributed AI workload performance.
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- Technical Communication: Ability to communicate technical concepts effectively across diverse engineering and operations teams.
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- Continuous Improvement: Demonstrates curiosity, proactive learning, and innovation in AI and HPC infrastructure.
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Success Metrics

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- Reliable provisioning of Kubernetes and Slurm AI clusters.
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- Performance validation and optimisation.
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- Improved operational efficiency.
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- High-quality documentation and effective knowledge transfer.
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Location & Reporting

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- Australia (Sydney, NSW or Launceston, TAS)
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- Reporting to Senior Manager, Software Defined Infrastructure
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Employment Basis

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Full-time

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Diversity

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At Firmus, we are committed to building a diverse and inclusive workplace. We encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds who are passionate about creating a more sustainable future through innovative engineering solutions.

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📌 Senior HPC Infrastructure Engineer (New South Wales)
🏢 Matchbox
📍 New South Wales