Principal Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure

NVIDIA is hiring a Principal Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure in Santa Clara, United States. It pays $272k-$431k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on NVIDIA.

Level's read on this job

Level rates this software engineer role Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
The listed pay starts 63% above the typical software engineer posting on Level.
Tools and skills the posting cites include Openstack, Nova and Neutron.
Level lists 2,600+ other open roles at NVIDIA.
The role was posted within the past two weeks.

AI in this role

Architects and develops large-scale bare-metal and cloud infrastructure, managing OpenStack and compute platforms.

OpenstackNovaNeutronIronicCinderKeystonePlacementKubernetesAnsible

cloud-infrastructuredistributed-systemsinfrastructure-as-codevirtualizationsystem-architecturesre

We are seeking a Principal Software Engineer to drive the architecture and development of our bare-metal and cloud compute infrastructure. Our organization supports hundreds of megawatts of datacenter capacity, making a growing physical fleet available as reliable, secure, and efficient compute services for NVIDIA engineering.

We operate an NVIDIA GPU Private cloud that provides infrastructure for continuous integration and validation. Hardware, firmware, drivers, networking, and system software are coordinated and tested on their path to production. The fleet includes x86 and Arm servers, GPUs, DPUs, high-speed networking, storage, and rack-scale systems. Platforms include Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin. In this senior individual contributor role, you will combine hands-on software engineering with architectural leadership. You will evolve our OpenStack platform, automate infrastructure operations, and address complex systems challenges across multiple datacenters.

What you'll be doing:

Own architecture and lead implementation of large-scale OpenStack infrastructure supporting bare-metal provisioning, virtual machines, and engineering workloads spanning several datacenters around the globe.
Architect and implement Infrastructure as Code frameworks to automate provisioning, configuration, and lifecycle management across OpenStack and bare-metal environments, using version-controlled definitions, automated validation, drift detection, and safe rollback.
Build and improve compute control planes, resource scheduling, topology-aware placement, reservations, and capacity management for heterogeneous hardware.
Develop and extend OpenStack services and integrations, including Nova, Neutron, Ironic, Cinder, Keystone, and Placement, based on platform requirements.
Improve platform scalability, availability, and performance through architectural changes, profiling, failure analysis, and detailed elimination of operational bottlenecks.
Build safe deployment, upgrade, migration, and rollback mechanisms that minimize disruption to engineering workloads.
Partner with SRE, datacenter operations, security, product engineering teams to onboard new platforms and resolve failures across system boundaries.

What we need to see:

15+ years of proven experience in software engineering, distributed systems, or cloud infrastructure, demonstrating leadership in diverse technical initiatives across teams. BS or MS in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
Deep experience crafting, developing, deploying, and fixing production OpenStack environments, particularly Nova, Neutron, and Ironic.
Strong software development skills in Python and experience building maintainable services, APIs, and infrastructure automation.
Strong understanding of distributed systems, including concurrency, state management, asynchronous workflows, failure handling, and recovery.
Deep Linux systems knowledge and experience with virtualization, KVM/QEMU, containers, and guest operating-system provisioning.
Proven understanding of cloud networking, including L2/L3 networking, VLANs, overlays, DHCP, PXE boot, routing, and tenant isolation.
Experience with databases and messaging infrastructure supporting cloud control planes, such as MySQL/MariaDB and RabbitMQ.
Experience operating infrastructure with demanding reliability requirements, including monitoring, incident response, system resources, and production upgrades.
Excellent debugging skills across hardware, firmware, operating systems, communication systems, data storage, and distributed services.
Ability to translate ambiguous requirements into technical direction and influence engineering teams across organizational boundaries and time zones.

Ways to stand out from the crowd:

Contributions to OpenStack or related open-source projects, including upstream features, bug fixes, performance improvements, or architectural proposals.
Experience scaling OpenStack across multiple regions or datacenters, including control-plane resilience, fleet upgrades, and workload migration.
Expertise in Ironic, Redfish, BMC integration, and provisioning or recovering large bare-metal fleets. Experience with Ceph, distributed storage, and storage integration with OpenStack.
Experience with GPU and Arm platforms, PCIe pass-through, SR-IOV, NVLink, InfiniBand, or high-speed Ethernet.
A record of delivering architectural improvements that measurably increase reliability, scalability, utilization, or developer efficiency.

NVIDIA brings together engineers working on some of the most ambitious problems in computing. Join us to build the infrastructure that enables the next generation of NVIDIA hardware and software. Widely considered to be one of the technology world’s most desirable employers, NVIDIA offers highly competitive salaries and a comprehensive benefits package. As you plan your future, see what we can offer to you and your family www.nvidiabenefits.com/

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and other objective job-related factors. The expected base salary range for this position is 272,000 USD – 431,250 USD.

You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until November 13, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy.

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering an inclusive work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.

How we rate this

Principal Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure at NVIDIA rates 0 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Little AI. AI is not part of the work.

●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Key facts

Principal Software Engineer, Cloud Infrastructure is an open job at NVIDIA.
Level rates this role AI Level 1 of 4: Little AI.
The listed salary is $272k-$431k a year.
The role is based in US, CA, Santa Clara.
The job was posted on November 9, 2026.
Seniority: senior.
Applications are handled by NVIDIA. Apply on NVIDIA

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

Cloud InfrastructureDistributed SystemsInfrastructure As CodeVirtualizationSystem ArchitectureSreOpenstackNova

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

Java AWS C++Kubernetes TypeScript React

Pay

This job starts at: $272k
Typical software engineer job: $167k

This posting starts 63% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

Tell me about a project where cloud infrastructure was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where infrastructure as code was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where virtualization was part of your work. What did you do?
Tell me about a project where system architecture was part of your work. What did you do?

Adapt your resume

List these exact terms on your resume: Cloud Infrastructure, Distributed Systems, Infrastructure As Code, Virtualization, and System Architecture. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.

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