Staff Backend Engineer, Forward Deployed
•Foxglove· 8h
EngineeringFull-time$220k-240kAmericas
8h ago
Fluidstack·4 days ago
At Fluidstack, we’re building the infrastructure for abundant intelligence. We partner with top AI labs, governments, and enterprises - including Mistral, Poolside, Black Forest Labs, Meta, and more - to unlock compute at the speed of light.
We’re working with urgency to make AGI a reality. As such, our team is highly motivated and committed to delivering world-class infrastructure. We treat our customers’ outcomes as our own, taking pride in the systems we build and the trust we earn. If you’re motivated by purpose, obsessed with excellence, and ready to work very hard to accelerate the future of intelligence, join us in building what's next.
Fluidstack is seeking a Network Engineer, Operations & Repair. This role combines hands-on Tier 2/3 network operations with site operational responsibilities. You'll be the expert for your assigned region, ensuring network reliability through incident response, break-fix coordination, and operational excellence. You'll work remotely when workload allows but be onsite as needed for deployments, complex troubleshooting, and critical incidents.
This role is ideal for experienced network operators who want ownership of a datacenter campus while being part of a broader operations organization. You'll partner closely with the Operations & Reliability pillar lead, centralized NOC for Tier 1 escalations, and cross-functional teams including Deployment, Hardware, and DC Operations. Success means maintaining high availability for your region, building strong relationships with onsite teams, and growing into regional operations leadership as the team scales.
Regional Operations Ownership: Serve as the primary network operations contact for a datacenter region. Own network health, respond to incidents escalated from NOC, and ensure fabrics run reliably. Build deep knowledge of your region's network topology, common failure modes, and operational characteristics.
Tier 2+ Incident Response: Handle network incidents escalated from Tier 1 NOC during your coverage window. Troubleshoot complex issues across physical and logical layers, coordinate with other engineers for follow-the-sun coverage, and drive incidents to resolution. Lead incident response when you're the subject matter expert..
Break-Fix Coordination: For incidents escalated and assigned, coordinate with hardware repair teams onsite.
Operations Support: Support RMA case process and escalations with supplier support teams. Build and support dashboards per region and multi-region aggregate observability. Manage field testing of repair and other operations process and automation; providing visibility and feedback to partners developing the tooling.
Deployment Support: Provide operational support for datacenter deployments and expansions in your region. Partner with Deployment teams on turn-up activities, validate production readiness, and ensure smooth handovers from deployment to operations. Be the person who ensures new pods integrate seamlessly into operational workflows.
Runbook Execution & Improvement: Build and execute operational runbooks for both repair and non-repair activities. Identify gaps in runbooks, document lessons learned, and provide feedback to the Operations lead on runbook improvements.
Cross-Team Collaboration: Build relationships with onsite DC Operations teams, structured cabling vendors, and hardware logistics partners. Serve as the network engineering liaison for your datacenter region. Communicate clearly about network status, planned maintenance, and operational issues.
Strong Operations Background: 5-8 years in network engineering with significant hands-on operational experience. You've run production networks, responded to incidents at all hours, and debugged complex failures under pressure. You understand the difference between "working" and "production-ready."
Analytics and Dashboards: Basic SQL and dashboard experience with Grafana, Tableau, or similar query/dashboard services. Basic python3 with jupyter notebooks or scripts.
Datacenter Fabric Expertise: Deep experience operating modern datacenter networks including EVPN/VXLAN, BGP, CLOS topologies, and high-radix switching. You're comfortable troubleshooting Layer 2/3 issues, BGP routing problems, fabric misconfigurations, and physical media failures..
Incident Response Excellence: Proven ability to lead incident response, perform systematic troubleshooting, and drive issues to resolution. You remain calm during outages, communicate clearly with stakeholders, and know when to escalate versus when to dig deeper. You've been the person others call when things break.
Matrix Leadership Experience: You understand how to build relationships with onsite teams, coordinate physical infrastructure work, and represent network engineering in a field environment. You know how to get things done in operational settings with many internal and external teams and stakeholders.
Operational Pragmatism: You balance perfection with progress. You can troubleshoot with imperfect information, make pragmatic decisions under time pressure, and prioritize based on business impact. You document as you go and continuously improve operational processes.
Hybrid Work Comfort: You're productive working remotely but understand that datacenter operations sometimes require hands-on presence. You're comfortable with 30-40% travel and flexible schedules that adapt to operational needs - sometimes remote, sometimes onsite for days or weeks during critical periods.
AI/HPC Fabric Operations: Experience operating AI/ML or HPC fabrics with RDMA (RoCEv2), lossless Ethernet (PFC, ECN), or high-performance networking. You understand the operational precision required when network performance directly impacts workload completion.
Regional/Campus Operations Leadership: You've been a site lead, campus engineer, or regional operations lead before. You know how to coordinate across teams in a specific geographic location while reporting into a centralized organization.
Hardware Break-Fix Experience: Hands-on experience coordinating hardware repairs, RMAs, and physical infrastructure work. You understand datacenter logistics, vendor escalation processes, and how to work effectively with onsite technicians.
Observability & Monitoring: Familiarity with network monitoring platforms, alerting systems, and telemetry collection. You've used monitoring tools to diagnose issues proactively and tune alerting to reduce noise. You have experience with SQL, MySQL, and building operations dashboards.
Automation Exposure: Basic scripting or automation experience (Python, Ansible) for operational tasks. You may not be writing complex automation but you understand how to leverage tools to improve operational efficiency. You can build a rough prototype of what’s needed and partner with developers to develop tools as one team.
Follow-the-Sun Experience: Experience working in distributed operations teams with follow-the-sun coverage models. You understand how to hand off incidents cleanly, communicate operational status across time zones, and coordinate with global teams.
Competitive total compensation package (salary + equity).
Retirement or pension plan, in line with local norms.
Health, dental, and vision insurance.
Generous PTO policy, in line with local norms.
The base salary range for this position is $150,000 - $250,000 per year, depending on experience, skills, qualifications, and location. This range represents our good faith estimate of the compensation for this role at the time of posting. Total compensation may also include equity in the form of stock options.
We are committed to pay equity and transparency.
Fluidstack is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability and protected veterans’ status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Fluidstack will consider for employment qualified applicants with arrest and conviction records pursuant to applicable law.
You will receive a confirmation email once your application has successfully been accepted. If there is an error with your submission and you did not receive a confirmation email, please email [email protected] with your resume/CV, the role you've applied for, and the date you submitted your application-- someone from our recruiting team will be in touch.