Principal AI Systems Engineer - Highrise AI

About Highrise AI

Highrise AI is a GPU-native infrastructure platform built for modern AI workloads. Designed for developers and enterprises operating in performance-critical and security-sensitive environments, Highrise delivers scalable GPU compute across dedicated clusters, managed cloud, and confidential environments.

Highrise combines bare-metal performance with full-stack orchestration, API-driven access, and hardware-enforced isolation to support training, fine-tuning, and production-scale deployment of AI models. From reserved GPU capacity to enterprise-grade confidential compute, Highrise provides flexible infrastructure models tailored to the needs of builders operating at scale.

Beyond infrastructure, Highrise integrates disciplined operations, advanced automation, and on-site engineering expertise to sustain high uptime and predictable performance across deployments. These capabilities extend beyond Highrise-owned fleets: through managed services, Highrise also operates third-party GPU hardware on behalf of customers and partners, applying the same operational standards to infrastructure it does not own.

Highrise is a subsidiary of Hut 8 Corp., an energy infrastructure platform. Hut 8 integrates power, digital infrastructure, and compute at scale. Highrise serves as the compute and operations layer—designing, deploying, and operating next-generation GPU clusters from commissioning through production.

ROLE OVERVIEW

We are seeking a principal-level, hands-on AI Systems Engineer to design, deploy, integrate, and operate the supporting infrastructure required for large-scale AI compute clusters. Working alongside senior compute, networking, and infrastructure engineers, this person will lead the deployment and configuration of general-purpose compute, virtualization, high-performance storage, infrastructure services, identity management, and security platforms.

The engineer will be responsible for bringing these systems from initial installation through integration, validation, and production acceptance. Following deployment, this person will provide Tier 3 technical escalation, advanced troubleshooting, and ongoing optimization of production infrastructure.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Systems Infrastructure Deployment and Integration

• Lead deployment and configuration of general-purpose x86 servers, Linux operating systems, virtualization platforms, and supporting infrastructure services.
• Design, deploy, and manage virtualized infrastructure using VMware, KVM, Proxmox, or equivalent technologies.
• Implement and maintain automated bare-metal provisioning, imaging, firmware management, and configuration workflows.
• Deploy and integrate core infrastructure services, including DNS, DHCP, NTP, IPAM, and DCIM platforms such as Infoblox and NetBox.
• Establish standardized configurations, infrastructure baselines, and scalable deployment procedures across multiple AI cluster environments.

Storage Infrastructure and Performance

• Deploy, configure, and optimize high-performance storage platforms, including WEKA, VAST Data, and other distributed storage solutions.
• Implement and manage file, object, and block storage services, including NFS and S3-compatible interfaces.
• Validate storage availability, performance, capacity, resilience, and integration with GPU compute environments.
• Troubleshoot storage performance bottlenecks, connectivity issues, filesystem errors, and distributed storage failures.
• Coordinate with storage vendors and engineering teams on deployment, acceptance testing, upgrades, and performance optimization.

Identity, Security, and Infrastructure Automation

• Deploy and maintain identity and access management services, including Active Directory/LDAP, SSO, SAML/OIDC, and role-based access control (RBAC).
• Integrate security and compliance infrastructure, including firewalls, access gateways, vulnerability scanning, logging, and audit systems.
• Implement automated provisioning, configuration management, and infrastructure-as-code solutions using Ansible, Terraform, Python, or equivalent tools.
• Establish secure administrative access, authentication, authorization, and privileged access management across infrastructure platforms.
• Partner with security and compliance teams to implement infrastructure controls, system hardening, access policies, and audit requirements.

Systems Validation and Production Acceptance

• Lead integration testing and operational acceptance of supporting infrastructure prior to commercial cluster deployment.
• Validate system availability, redundancy, failover, service dependencies, performance, and recovery procedures.
• Identify and remediate configuration inconsistencies, integration issues, and infrastructure reliability risks.
• Develop acceptance criteria, testing procedures, operational documentation, and production handoff requirements.

Tier 3 Operations and Reliability

• Serve as a senior technical escalation point for complex production incidents involving systems, virtualization, storage, identity, and infrastructure services.
• Perform advanced troubleshooting, root cause analysis, and corrective action planning for recurring or systemic failures.
• Support infrastructure upgrades, maintenance, capacity expansion, and lifecycle management with appropriate change controls.
• Develop diagnostic tooling, automation, operational runbooks, and monitoring standards to improve reliability and reduce operational overhead.
• Collaborate with NOC, SRE, data hall technicians, engineering teams, and external vendors to resolve critical infrastructure issues.

ABOUT YOU

Education and Experience

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, information technology, or related discipline, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of hands-on experience engineering and operating enterprise, cloud, HPC, or large-scale data center infrastructure.
• Expert-level Linux systems administration, troubleshooting, automation, and infrastruc