Sr Ethernet AI Network Engineer

Vailexa • Santa Clara, CA

1d

About The Position

Vailexa is seeking a Senior Ethernet AI Network Engineer to deploy, validate, and support Ethernet fabrics for AI and HPC cluster environments. The role focuses on production network troubleshooting, validating fabric readiness for distributed training and high-volume east-west traffic, diagnosing performance problems, and coordinating with Linux, storage, and cluster deployment teams. The engineer will also execute network changes, gather evidence for root cause analysis, and establish operational standards for fabric health and consistency.

Requirements

• At least 7 years of experience in large-scale data center networking, including high-bandwidth Ethernet fabrics.
• Strong experience with spine-leaf design, routing, switching, and production troubleshooting.
• Hands-on skill with BGP, EVPN/VXLAN, MLAG, ECMP, QoS, PFC, RoCE considerations, and telemetry interpretation.
• Experience validating optics, breakout configurations, cable plant integrity, and port-level consistency.
• Ability to troubleshoot distributed application impact caused by network behavior.
• Comfort using switch CLI, automation tooling, and packet/counter analysis workflows.
• Strong documentation habits for topology, incident timelines, and remediation plans.

Nice To Haves

• Direct experience with AI fabrics carrying large-scale GPU collective traffic.
• Familiarity with SONiC, Cumulus Linux, or vendor NOS platforms used in AI data centers.
• Experience with streaming telemetry, Prometheus/Grafana, and network SRE operating models.

Responsibilities

• Deploy, validate, and support Ethernet fabrics used for AI and HPC cluster environments.
• Troubleshoot L1 through L4 issues involving optics, transceivers, cabling, link bring-up, VLANs, MLAG, ECMP, BGP, underlay and overlay reachability, congestion, and packet loss.
• Validate network readiness for distributed training and large east-west traffic patterns.
• Diagnose performance issues involving buffer pressure, microbursts, PFC behavior, QoS policy, MTU mismatch, routing instability, and oversubscription.
• Work with Linux, storage, and cluster deployment teams to isolate host-versus-network fault domains.
• Review and execute change plans for switch provisioning, firmware upgrades, topology expansion, and maintenance events.
• Capture packet-level and counter-based evidence to support root cause analysis.
• Build operational standards for cable mapping, port policy consistency, and fabric health validation.

What This Job Offers

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