Principal Engineer - SambaRack

SambaNova is a leader in next-generation AI infrastructure, delivering a full-stack inference platform for customers worldwide. At the core of SambaNova's technology is the RDU (Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit) — a chip built on a dataflow architecture rather than the traditional GPU model. Its decode performance is especially strong for agentic workloads like multi-turn agents, code generation, and long-running applications. RDUs are packaged into SambaRack, rack-scale hardware that lets customers deploy state-of-the-art models with better performance, greater energy efficiency, and faster time to value.

About the team

Join the company that's building the future of AI infrastructure. SambaNova is developing advanced AI systems powered by our RDU (Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit) architecture, combining hardware and software into an integrated platform for large-scale AI deployments.

Our products include SambaRack, a rack-scale AI infrastructure system, and SambaStack, our inference serving platform. Together, they enable customers to deploy and operate production AI environments with performance, reliability, and control.

We are a team of engineers and innovators building next-generation AI infrastructure systems designed for enterprise-scale deployments.

About the role

SambaNova is hiring a Principal Engineer for the SambaRack platform.

You will help build the software that enables customers to monitor, control, update, and diagnose SambaRack systems safely and reliably.

This is a hands-on software development role requiring solid technical expertise in systems and infrastructure, focused on building rack-scale hardware management and infrastructure software that operates in direct contact with hardware across diverse production environments, including customer-managed and air-gapped deployments.

As a Principal Engineer on the SambaRack team, you will:

• Improve the performance, scalability, and reliability of components within rack-scale infrastructure and management software
• Build new features and capabilities for monitoring, control, and diagnostics of SambaRack systems
• Design and build components for hardware-software integration points across rack-scale AI systems
• Support technical execution of infrastructure initiatives, tightly integrated with hardware

This is a high-impact role at the intersection of:

• AI infrastructure
• Distributed systems
• Hardware-software integration

Responsibilities

Some of your responsibilities will include:

• Design and build software components that enable safe, reliable control, monitoring, and diagnostics for rack-scale AI systems
• Contribute to the technical design and implementation of hardware-software integration points and infrastructure services
• Build and improve observability, telemetry, and diagnostics capabilities for the SambaRack platform
• Identify and help resolve performance bottlenecks, reliability gaps, and scaling constraints within owned components
• Collaborate with Hardware Engineering, DevOps, QA, and Product teams to implement infrastructure requirements as sound technical solutions
• Apply and help refine architectural standards, patterns, and best practices within the infrastructure software team
• Partner with senior engineers and architects on technical designs, and share knowledge with peers to support engineering excellence
• Stay current on emerging technologies and industry trends relevant to the platform and assigned work
• Build new systems, components, and capabilities to solve new and interesting problems in the AI inference space

Required qualifications

• 5-8 years of software engineering experience
• Experience building infrastructure, systems, or platform software
• Solid programming experience in Go, Rust, Python, or C/C++
• Good understanding of Linux, networking, concurrency, and distributed systems
• Experience building backend or control-plane services for production systems
• Experience with hardware management systems such as BMCs, Redfish, IPMI, or OpenBMC
• Experience with monitoring, telemetry, or observability systems for infrastructure platforms
• Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail
• Ability to collaborate across cross-functional teams
• Knowledge of software development best practices and coding standards

Preferred qualifications

• Experience with rack management, server management, or bare-metal infrastructure platforms
• Experience with Prometheus, Grafana, and metrics exporter design
• Familiarity with fleet management, diagnostics systems, and hardware health monitoring
• Experience supporting enterprise or air-gapped deployments
• Understanding of Kubernetes, Helm Charts, and the Kubernetes ecosystem
• Experience contributing to scalable infrastructure and distributed systems designs
• Familiarity with telemetry systems and infrastructure observability tooling

Base Salary Range:

Submission Guidelines
Please note that in order to be considered an applicant for any position at SambaNova Systems, you must submit an application form for each position for which you believe you are qualified.

EEO Policy
SambaNova Systems is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard basis of age (40 and over), color, disability, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, national origin/ancestry, race, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding), sexual orientation, and any other applicable status protected by federal, state, or local laws.

Benefits Summary for US-Based, Full-Time Employment Positions
SambaNova offers a competitive total rewards package, including the base salary, plus equity and benefits. We cover 95% premium coverage for employee medical insurance, and 77% premium coverage for dependents and offer a Health Savings Account (HSA) with employer contribution. We also offer Dental, Vision, Short/Long term Disability, Basic Life, Voluntary Life, and AD&D insurance plans in addition to Flexible Spending Account (FSA) options like Health Care, Limited Purpose, and Dependent Care. Our library of well-being benefits available to you and your dependents includes a full subscription to Headspace, Gympass+ membership with access to physical gyms, One Medical membership, counseling services with an Employee Assistance Program, and much more.