Compute Server Platform Architect

About the role

As a Compute/Server Platform Architect on the Cluster Architecture Team, you will own the server‑side platform architecture that enables Cerebras CS‑3 AI clusters to deliver predictable performance, scalability and reliability for training and inference workloads.

Key responsibilities

• Own the architecture for all server roles in Cerebras clusters, defining server types, configurations and lifecycle strategy.
• Define and maintain server formulas, capacity planning and headroom policies.
• Specify platform configurations including CPU SKU, memory topology, PCIe topology, NIC selection and local NVMe policy.
• Translate software and runtime flows into measurable hardware requirements and communicate guardrails to software teams.
• Develop performance and scaling models, validate with micro‑benchmarks and identify bottlenecks.
• Define OS, BIOS, firmware and driver baselines for each server type.
• Stay current on emerging server technologies and run proof‑of‑concept evaluations.
• Lead technical vendor engagements, influence roadmaps and drive joint debugging.
• Define qualification and acceptance criteria and partner with TPMs for production rollout.
• Support bring‑up and deployment debugging, driving root‑cause analysis across firmware, drivers, OS and runtime.

Required profile

• PhD in Computer Science or Electrical/Computer Engineering with 8+ years industry experience, or Master’s/Bachelor’s with 10+ years.
• 5+ years experience in server platform architecture, systems performance engineering or large‑scale infrastructure design for AI/ML, HPC or performance‑sensitive distributed systems.
• Deep understanding of x86 server architecture, CPU microarchitecture, cache hierarchies, NUMA and memory bandwidth/latency trade‑offs.
• Strong Linux systems knowledge, including profiling, performance analysis and tuning.
• Experience with high‑performance I/O paths, NIC behavior, RDMA/RoCE and NVMe characteristics.
• Proven ability to create and validate capacity and performance models with rigorous benchmarking.
• Experience working directly with vendors to evaluate platforms and influence roadmaps.
• Excellent cross‑functional communication and ability to drive technical decisions.

Required skills

• x86 server architecture
• Linux systems
• CPU microarchitecture
• NUMA
• PCIe
• NVMe
• RDMA / RoCE
• C, C++, Python

What we offer

• Opportunity to work on a breakthrough AI platform beyond GPU constraints.
• Publish and open‑source cutting‑edge AI research.
• Work on one of the fastest AI supercomputers in the world.
• Job stability with startup vitality and a non‑corporate culture.