Principal Software Engineer - Fleet Management
Nscale is hiring a Principal Software Engineer - Fleet Management. It pays $240k-$400k a year and Level rates it ; you can apply on Nscale.
Level's read on this job
- Little AI ●○○○ is how Level rates this software engineer role: aI is not part of the work.
- The listed pay starts 43% above the typical software engineer posting on Level.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include Claude, Cursor and Python.
- Level classifies it as a lead role.
- Level lists 285 other open roles at Nscale.
AI in this role
Lead technical development of Python-based fleet management and workflow automation systems for GPU infrastructure.
About Nscale
Nscale is building a vertically integrated GenAI cloud from sustainable data centers to advanced AI infrastructure and enterprise applications. Our culture values open collaboration, ownership, and excellence.
About the Role
We're hiring a Principal Software Engineer to lead the technical development of our Fleet Manager platform - the workflow automation system that provisions, tests, and remediates GPU nodes and network switches at scale.
As technical lead, you'll own the architecture and delivery of foundational Python-based automation systems that manage the entire lifecycle of our compute infrastructure: device enrolment, burn-in testing, network configuration, GPU health monitoring, and self-healing capabilities. You'll mentor a team of senior engineers, set technical direction, and drive engineering excellence while remaining hands-on with critical systems.
What you'll do
- Lead technical architecture and roadmap for Fleet Manager's workflow automation systems
- Own end-to-end delivery of device provisioning, validation, testing, and remediation workflows at scale
- Design and build workflow orchestration systems for GPU node and network switch lifecycle management
- Establish engineering standards for reliability, observability, and operational excellence across all Fleet Manager services
- Mentor and raise the bar for a team of senior engineers through design reviews, technical leadership, and hands-on collaboration
- Drive architecture decisions balancing automation complexity, reliability, and maintainability
- Integrate with infrastructure tooling: DCIMs, NetBox, OpenStack, bare metal APIs (MAAS, Ironic, IPMI)
- Partner with Infrastructure, Platform, and SRE teams to translate operational needs into robust, scalable automation
- Build production-grade Python systems for hardware lifecycle automation, leveraging AI tools to accelerate delivery
About You
- You have 12-15+ years software engineering experience building and operating production systems, with proven technical leadership in infrastructure automation or workflow tooling
- Strong Python engineering fundamentals with experience leading complex, multi-service distributed systems
- You are driven by building distributed systems at scale, infrastructure reliability, scalability, security, and continuous improvement
- Technical expertise: quickly understanding systems design tradeoffs, keeping track of rapidly evolving software systems
- Track record of owning technical roadmaps and delivering large-scale automation systems from ambiguous requirements to production
- You use AI tools like Claude or Cursor as a core part of your development workflow - as a fundamental multiplier of what you can build
- Deep understanding of operational excellence: SLOs, monitoring, alerting, incident response, and production reliability
- Strong mentorship skills with ability to develop high-performing engineering teams
- Excellent communication skills to build consensus with stakeholders, both internally and externally
Strong candidates will have
- Experience with workflow orchestration tools like Temporal, Airflow, Prefect, or similar
- Hands-on experience with infrastructure tooling: DCIMs, NetBox, OpenStack, or ERP systems
- Bare metal provisioning and automation: MAAS, Ironic, IPMI, PXE boot, or network automation
- Experience building hardware lifecycle automation: provisioning, validation, testing, or remediation workflows
- GPU infrastructure experience: health monitoring, burn-in testing, or cluster management
- HPC and networking: datacenter topology, high-performance interconnects (InfiniBand, RoCE)
- Deep knowledge of Kubernetes, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi), AWS, and GCP
- Track record of 1+ years leading large-scale, complex projects or technical teams
- Open-source contributions in infrastructure automation or cloud-native tooling
The range below reflects the base salary for the position. Actual compensation may vary based on job-related factors such as skill set, experience, education, and location. In addition to base salary, this role may be eligible for bonus, equity, and/or commission programs. Nscale may offer a competitive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, flexible paid time off, parental leave, and retirement plan participation.
Salary Range$240,000—$400,000 USDFor information on how Nscale handles candidate personal data, please see our Employee & Candidate Privacy Notice: Here.
Nscale does not accept unsolicited candidate submissions from recruitment agencies.
How we rate this
Principal Software Engineer - Fleet Management at Nscale rates 35 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.
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.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Pay
- This job starts at
- $240k
- Typical software engineer job
- $168k
This posting starts 43% above the typical software engineer job. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- Tell me about a project where software engineering was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where infrastructure automation 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 python was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where gpu management was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Software Engineering, Infrastructure Automation, Distributed Systems, Python, and GPU Management. 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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