Senior Forward Deployed Architect, Generative AI
AI in this role
NVIDIA has been transforming computer graphics, PC gaming, and accelerated computing for more than 25 years. It's a unique legacy of innovation that's fueled by great technology and amazing people. Today, we're tapping into the unlimited potential of AI to define the next era of computing. An era in which our GPU acts as the brains of computers, robots, and self-driving cars that can understand the world. Doing what's never been done before takes vision, innovation, and the world's best talent. As an NVIDIAN, you'll be immersed in a diverse, supportive environment where everyone is inspired to do their best work. Join our team and discover how you can build a lasting impact on the world.
NVIDIA is looking for a Forward Deployed Architect to provide technical leadership and strategic guidance across AI Accelerator engagements with AI Native organizations, NeoCloud Providers, and ISVs. You'll advise on architecture and integration, define what good looks like, and bring learnings back to inform the DSX product roadmap. This role is engaged when standard product capabilities are not enough and the work needs to be specialized. Curious about novel hardware before it has a playbook? Excited to define how new platforms get used at scale? Our team works alongside customers and partners on infrastructure problems no one has solved yet, helping teams adopt NVIDIA technology the right way and shaping how new AI workloads get deployed.
What you'll be doing:
- Cross-Account Technical Leadership. Provide architectural direction across strategic engagements where standard capabilities are not enough and advanced implementation, optimization, or integration customization is needed.
- Outcome-Focused Implementation. Help customers integrate the right components to deliver on their outcomes. Where DSX software fits, advise on adopting it the right way. Where it doesn't, help them succeed with the right alternative and bring the gap back to product and engineering.
- Hands-On Technical Leadership. Dive into complex technical challenges hands-on when needed to solve critical problems, validate architectures, or prove out solutions.
- Strategic Initiative Ownership. Lead technically demanding programs end to end, including third-party performance benchmarking across hardware and workloads.
- Pattern Identification and Knowledge Sharing. Identify common challenges and solution patterns across engagements. Share findings with internal teams and the broader AI community.
- Technical Standardization. Develop standardized approaches, reference architectures, and structured guidance rooted in patterns from successful engagements.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration. Partner with product, engineering, and other customer-facing NVIDIA teams so what we learn in the field informs internal strategy and capabilities.
- Strategic Architecture. Design technical strategies for advanced AI workloads (distributed training, large-scale inference, model and pipeline optimization, MLOps) that apply across multiple customers and partners.
- New Hardware Enablement. Help develop new infrastructure patterns and playbooks for the latest NVIDIA hardware as it lands with customers and partners.
What we need to see:
- Bachelors degree or equivalent experience.
- 10+ years in technical roles such as solutions architecture, ML engineering, technical product management, or technical consulting across multiple customers or projects. Alternatively, 5+ years of specialist-level experience working at the frontier of AI infrastructure.
- Strong technical leadership with the ability to guide teams and influence technical decisions without direct authority.
- Systems thinking with the ability to understand customer outcomes and translate them into clear technical requirements and architectures.
- Willingness to prototype, implement, validate, and troubleshoot hands-on when needed to solve critical problems or prove out approaches.
- A solid technical foundation in the technologies AI infrastructure is built on, especially Linux systems administration.
- A self-directed learner who can ramp on brand new technologies and unfamiliar technical domains independently.
- Strong communication skills with the ability to engage technical teams, executives, and multi-functional collaborators.
Ways to stand out from the crowd:
- Solutions architecture or technical consulting background across multiple customer engagements simultaneously, with experience bringing novel AI hardware or frameworks to production with frontier AI Native organizations, hyperscalers, NeoClouds, or ISVs.
- A foundational cloud or distributed systems background built at hyperscaler scale.
- A public technical voice: blog posts, talks, open-source contributions, or reference work that shows depth and opinion.
- Hands-On Technical Expertise in one or more of: NVIDIA Stack (CUDA, NeMo, Triton, TensorRT, NIM, DGX Cloud, and the broader DSX software portfolio), Inference Systems (large-scale inference with frameworks like vLLM and SGLang, prefill-decode disaggregation, performance optimization across hardware), Training Systems (distributed training, model and pipeline optimization, open-source generative AI frameworks), Infrastructure (SLURM, Kubernetes, GPU scheduling, distributed computing frameworks, rack-scale systems, multiple CSP or NCP cloud environments), and Observability and Automation (CI/CD, infrastructure as code, GPU performance monitoring).
How we rate this
Senior Forward Deployed Architect, Generative AI at NVIDIA rates 71 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Works on AI (AI Level 3 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Works on AI. The daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- ●●●● 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. Open the description and count.
Prepare for this job
A free preview built only from this posting: what it asks for, what you could be asked in an interview, and how to adjust your resume.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Questions you could be asked
- How do you monitor a model once it's live, and how do you know it needs retraining?
- Walk me through how you've used vLLM in your day-to-day work.
- Describe a typical day in a role like this one: which parts run through AI directly?
- If you removed AI from this role, what would be left, and how do you decide what still needs a human?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: ML Ops and vLLM. 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.
- Show where AI is part of your daily process, not a one-off project — this role expects it to be a running habit.
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