Senior Software Engineer, Automation Infrastructure
NVIDIA is hiring a Senior Software Engineer, Automation Infrastructure in Shanghai, China. Level rates it ; you can apply on NVIDIA.
Level's read on this job
- Level rates this software engineer role Works on AI ●●●○: the daily work is on AI products, without building the model.
- The posting mentions Linux, Containers and AI evaluation among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a senior role.
- NVIDIA has 2,600+ other open roles on Level.
AI in this role
Build automation infrastructure and performance evaluation systems for AI workloads, large language models, and agentic AI systems.
NVIDIA's Performance Lab (PerfLab) builds the systems and automation used to evaluate the performance and quality of accelerated computing and AI workloads. We turn complex benchmark experiments into reliable, scalable, and reproducible workflows that help engineering teams make better decisions faster.
We are looking for an experienced and highly self-motivated System Software Engineer to help build the next generation of our infrastructure. You will independently own meaningful platform components and lead projects from problem discovery and technical design through production deployment and adoption. The ideal candidate enjoys finding important engineering problems, understanding their root causes, and using technology to create simple, reusable solutions.
You will collaborate with NVIDIA teams around the world and influence how we evaluate evolving areas such as large language models, agentic AI, accelerated computing, and other emerging AI workloads.
What You'll Be Doing
Define the technical direction and architecture for major areas of PerfLab's benchmark infrastructure, translating evolving business and engineering needs into clear roadmaps and scalable platform capabilities.
Lead the design and implementation of reusable software, services, and workflows that automate benchmark definition, execution, result collection, validation, and reporting across local, cluster, and cloud-native environments.
Remain hands-on with performance testing and analysis, developing a deep understanding of existing workflows and using that knowledge to guide platform investments and technical decisions.
Establish engineering approaches that improve the reliability, scalability, observability, maintainability, and reproducibility of large benchmark campaigns.
Lead the diagnosis of complex, cross-layer issues spanning applications, Linux systems, containers, distributed jobs, compute resources, networking, and storage.
Build strong partnerships with performance engineers, QA teams, product teams, and other customers; create alignment across organizations and drive high-impact ideas and projects from concept through adoption.
Provide technical leadership through architecture and code reviews, clear decision-making, high engineering standards, and mentoring of other engineers.
Identify emerging technologies, including AI-assisted automation, and determine where they can deliver meaningful improvements in benchmark creation, failure triage, data analysis, or engineering productivity.
Contribute to the strategy and development of internal and open-source infrastructure projects, and help grow their adoption across teams.
What We Need to See
Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
6+ years of relevant software engineering experience in system software, infrastructure, developer platforms, distributed systems, or production automation.
Strong Python programming and software engineering expertise, with a track record of building and operating production-quality tools, services, or automation frameworks.
Solid understanding of Linux and system-level concepts such as processes, concurrency, networking, storage, resource management, and failure handling.
Extensive experience with containers and workload orchestration, scheduling, or distributed computing platforms, including the design of reliable systems with clear interfaces, testing, observability, and recovery behavior.
Knowledge of machine learning, AI, or accelerated-computing workloads and experience reasoning about their performance, quality, and operational tradeoffs.
Proven technical leadership on sophisticated, multi-functional projects, including defining architecture, managing technical risk, resolving ambiguity, and driving solutions through delivery and adoption.
Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities, with the judgment to prioritize effectively, manage multiple initiatives, and adapt in a dynamic, constantly evolving environment.
Excellent communication, organizational, and influencing skills, with the ability to align globally distributed collaborators and drive decisions.
A record of mentoring engineers, elevating engineering quality, and helping teams make better technical decisions.
Ways to Stand Out From the Crowd
Experience leading major initiatives in GPU or AI infrastructure, distributed training or inference, model evaluation, or performance benchmarking.
Experience architecting workflow engines, schedulers, experiment platforms, test frameworks, or developer infrastructure used by multiple teams.
Experience operating distributed or cloud-native systems at scale, including performance profiling, capacity analysis, resource scheduling, or multi-node workloads.
Practical experience establishing AI-agent, tool-calling, or coding-agent strategies that improved engineering workflows at team or organizational scale.
Demonstrated success turning loosely defined, cross-organizational problems into durable platforms or programs with measurable engineering impact.
We have some of the most forward-thinking and hardworking people in the world working for us. If you are creative, autonomous, and passionate about providing technical leadership while remaining hands-on in building systems that make complex AI performance work repeatable and scalable, we want to hear from you.
How we rate this
Senior Software Engineer, Automation Infrastructure at NVIDIA rates 60 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. 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
Also common in software engineer jobs at this level
Pay
- Typical software engineer job
- $167k
This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical software engineer figure when pay comes up. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- How do you decide that one model's output is better than another's for a given task?
- Tell me about a project where software engineering 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 automation was part of your work. What did you do?
- Tell me about a project where performance testing was part of your work. What did you do?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: AI Evaluation, Software Engineering, Distributed Systems, Automation, and Performance Testing. 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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