Network Platform Team Lead

Volta • Palo Alto, CA

1d • Onsite

About The Position

Volta builds and operates large scale GPU compute infrastructure for AI workloads. The network is not a layer underneath the platform, it is part of it. Fabric design, overlay and multi-tenancy, edge connectivity, and the software that programs and observes all of it sit in one team, deliberately. You will lead that team: a small group of senior network platform engineers who write production software against the fabric rather than only operating it.

Requirements

• 5+ years in large scale data center or cloud network engineering, with at least 2 years leading an engineering team.
• Production software development, not scripting. Python or Go in a shared repository under normal review and CI standards. Our working languages are Python, Go, and Rust.
• Ethernet fabric design and operations at depth: leaf spine, BGP including unnumbered BGP, ECMP, and the day-two realities of running it at low latency.
• RoCE v2 at scale: PFC and ECN tuning, DCQCN, and a clear understanding of how it behaves differently from InfiniBand in a GPU training environment.
• InfiniBand production experience: fat tree topology, UFM, fabric partitioning, adaptive routing, congestion control, with operational and troubleshooting depth rather than design familiarity alone.
• EVPN and VXLAN in production, including running an overlay under multi-tenant load.
• Network automation at scale: configuration as code, a source of truth system such as NetBox or Nautobot, CI validation of network change, and declarative or idempotent tooling.
• Kubernetes networking: CNI, and how workload networking interacts with the underlying fabric.
• GPU infrastructure experience: how training and inference traffic patterns shape fabric design, and how capacity is surfaced through a platform or API layer.
• Multi-vendor credibility: able to design, evaluate, and challenge proposals from any major OEM.
• Security awareness: trust boundaries, least privilege, and secure defaults in multi-tenant network design.
• Proven people management: running 1:1s, delivering performance feedback, and taking accountability for a team's delivery and wellbeing.
• Clear communicator who can translate technical complexity for product, leadership, and customer stakeholders.
• Willing to be on site during cluster bring-up when it matters.

Nice To Haves

• Fluency with AI-assisted development, and interest in scaling agent-assisted workflows across the team (agentic CLI tools, MCP, skills, APIs) to amplify delivery.
• ASN operations: running a public autonomous system, BGP peering with transit providers and IXes, RPKI and IRR hygiene, and DDoS posture.
• IPv6 at production scale: dual stack DC design, v6 BGP peering, and addressing architecture.
• NVIDIA Spectrum-X, including NetQ and Cumulus, or SONiC and whitebox platforms.
• gNMI, OpenConfig, or NETCONF/YANG based telemetry and configuration.
• OVN/OVS, SR-IOV, DPDK, or BlueField DPU based networking.
• Familiarity with NVLink and NVSwitch topologies and NCCL behaviour.
• Experience working distributed across time zones with counterparts in other regions.
• Open source contributions to networking or infrastructure projects.

Responsibilities

• Lead the network platform engineering team: technical direction, design reviews, code review, and day-to-day delivery.
• Set the technical direction for the network layers of the platform: compute and storage fabric, overlay and multi-tenant isolation, edge connectivity, and the telemetry and automation that make them operable.
• Own the design and evolution of Volta's fabric standards across sites, including RoCE v2 and InfiniBand deployments, and hold the team to a single reference architecture rather than per site variants.
• Represent network platform engineering in roadmap planning: translate product requirements into scoped, sequenced technical work, communicate trade-offs, and keep delivery on track.
• Own how network capability is exposed upward: the APIs, abstractions, and IaaS control plane integration through which tenants get isolated, performant networking.
• Work closely with the bring-up teams to surface operational pain points from cluster deployment and turn them into scalable platform features and automation.
• Evaluate and challenge network designs from OEMs and partners, and hold vendors to Volta's requirements rather than accepting reference designs as given.
• Support customer facing technical conversations: workload requirements, fabric design review, and acceptance criteria.
• Collaborate with the security engineering team on trust boundaries, tenant isolation, and remediation of network layer findings.
• Coordinate with the other platform engineering leads on shared architecture, joint initiatives, and cross-team and cross-timezone delivery.
• Own reliability, observability, and interface and versioning standards for the services and fabric your team ships.
• Stay hands-on: take on complex or high-risk engineering work directly alongside the team, including during bring-up and incident response.
• Run post-mortems and close structural gaps after incidents, not just the immediate issue.
• Manage the team: 1:1s, performance conversations, hiring interviews, and onboarding.

Benefits

• Competitive salary based on the work you do here, not your previous salary
• Equity in Volta, giving you the opportunity to share in the company's long-term success
• Retirement/pension contributions
• Comprehensive health, wellbeing and insurance benefits
• Generous number of vacation days each year

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed