Infrastructure Engineer (Storage)

Job Application for Infrastructure Engineer (Storage) at Lightning AI

Infrastructure Engineer (Storage) New York, New York, United States; Remote; San Francisco, California, United States; Seattle, Washington, United States

Who We Are

Lightning AI is the company behind PyTorch Lightning. Founded in 2019, we build an end-to-end platform for developing, training, and deploying AI systems—designed to take ideas from research to production with less friction.

Through our merger with Voltage Park, a neocloud and AI Factory, Lightning AI combines developer-first software with cost-efficient, large-scale compute. Teams get the tools they need for experimentation, training, and production inference, with security, observability, and control built in.

We serve solo researchers, startups, and large enterprises. Lightning AI operates globally with offices in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and London, and is backed by Coatue, Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Firstminute.

What We're Looking For

Lightning AI is seeking a Storage Infrastructure Engineer to join our Infrastructure Engineering team.

In this role, you will focus on building and operating the storage systems that power large-scale AI/ML training, inference, and HPC workloads. You will work at the intersection of software, hardware, and operations—developing automation, improving reliability, and scaling distributed storage systems across our bare-metal infrastructure.

You will help own the data plane of our storage infrastructure, supporting high-throughput, low-latency data access for some of the most demanding AI workloads. You’ll play a key role in managing and evolving our storage stack (including VAST and S3-compatible systems like Ceph), ensuring performance, reliability, and efficiency at scale.

We’re flexible on location for this team. This role can work hybrid out of one of our US-based hubs (Seattle, NYC, or SF) or fully remote within the U.S., with occasional company and team offsites. We are not able to provide visa sponsorship for this position at this time.

What You'll Do

Storage Systems & Infrastructure

Operate and scale distributed storage systems, including VAST and S3-compatible object storage (e.g., Ceph)

Improve performance, reliability, and efficiency of storage systems supporting large-scale AI/ML workloads

Troubleshoot complex storage and data path issues across hardware and software layers

Optimize storage performance to support high-throughput, low-latency AI training and inference workloads

Automation & Tooling

Build and maintain automation for provisioning, managing, and monitoring storage infrastructure

Develop Python-based tools and workflows to reduce manual operational overhead

Improve lifecycle management of storage clusters, from deployment through maintenance and scaling

Systems & Operations

Manage and operate Linux-based systems in production, including bare-metal environments

Partner with infrastructure and data center teams on hardware bring-up, upgrades, and issue resolution

Support capacity planning, utilization tracking, and forecasting for storage systems

Leverage monitoring and telemetry to diagnose issues and improve system performance and reliability

Cross-Functional Collaboration

Work closely with Infrastructure Engineering, Network Engineering, and Platform teams to integrate storage into the broader platform

Contribute to design discussions around new infrastructure deployments and scaling strategies

Help define best practices for operating storage systems in high-performance computing environments

What You'll Need

Required Qualifications

5+ years of experience in infrastructure engineering, systems engineering, or related roles

Hands-on experience operating distributed storage systems (e.g., VAST, Ceph, or similar)

Strong Linux systems experience in production environments

Proficiency in Python or similar scripting/programming languages for automation

Experience working with bare-metal infrastructure and hardware-oriented systems

Ability to debug complex issues across system boundaries (storage, OS, hardware, networking)

Experience with storage networking protocols (e.g., NFS or similar)

Experience with capacity planning, monitoring, and performance tuning

Ideal Experience

Experience with VAST storage systems in production environments

Experience operating S3-compatible object storage at scale

Data center operations experience, including working with physical hardware

Familiarity with AI/ML or HPC workloads and their storage requirements

Background in high-performance or low-latency distributed systems

Familiarity with high-performance data transfer technologies (e.g., RDMA, GPU Direct Storage)

Experience supporting GPU-based workloads or large-scale compute clusters

Compensation

We are committed to offering competitive compensation that reflects the value each team member brings to our mission. Final offers are based on factors such as experience, skills, geographic location, and role expectations. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package for eligible roles includes a discretionary bonus, a meaningful equity component, and comprehensive benefits.

The anticipated annual base salary range for this role is: $180,000 - $200,000 USD

Benefits and Perks

We offer a comprehensive and competitive benefits package designed to support our employees’ health, well-being, and long-term success. Benefits may vary by location, team, and role.

Benefits include:

Comprehensive medical, dental and vision coverage (U.S.); Private medical and dental insurance (U.K.)

Retirement and financial wellness support (U.S.); Pension contribution (U.K.)

Generous paid time off, plus holidays

Paid parental leave

Professional development support

Wellness and work-from-home stipends

Flexible work environment

At Lightning AI, we are committed to fostering an inclusive and diverse workplace. We believe that diverse teams drive innovation and create better products. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic. We are dedicated to building a culture where everyone can thrive and contribute to their fullest potential.

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