Systems Software Engineer
We're building the company which will de-risk the largest infrastructure build-out in history.
When people finance GPU clusters, the datacenters housing them, and the infrastructure powering them, they need "offtake" - meaning someone has signed a contract to lease the cluster for a period of time before its even built.
Financing a GPU cluster is inherently risky, since margins are thin and volumes are huge. Lenders don't want to take on the risk that cluster developers can't repay their loan, and cluster developers really don't want to risk not selling their cluster. As a result, risk is offloaded to the customer using fixed-price long-term contracts.
If you don't mitigate this customer risk, there's a bubble. This isn't SaaS anymore - application layer companies sign multi-year contracts for computer and inference, but sell to customers on monthly subscriptions. If you mess up a purchase, it's game over: a minor shift in your revenue growth rate might mean the difference between profit or bankruptcy. But what if companies could exit their contract by selling it back to the market?
Otherwise, as AI scales, compute only becomes available to folks who can effectively take on that risk. A 2-person startup in a San Francisco Victorian can't realistically sign a 5-year take or pay contract on $100m supercomputers. But they may be able to buy the month of liquidity that someone else sold back.
So that's what we make: a liquid market for GPU offtake.
About the Role
At SFC, we are building a GPU market which necessitates bringing the software functionality of the hyperscalers to GPU neoclouds. The work in this role spans provisioning and monitoring bare metal servers with our VM orchestration software all the way to coordinating with our GPU marketplace to enable users to configure the VMs, networks, and storage running on their rented compute. Parts of this include building a Linux OS image with our software tools along with maintaining a tool to ensure that our golden image is able to be consistently (applied across nodes along with per-data-center tweaks such as networking configuration), and helping design the API protocol and server that users interact with in order to configure VMs.
We primarily use Rust as it enables us to write code that operates at almost every layer of our system (from the web server to coordinating with the kernel, and BIOS), but if you are familiar with a language that requires manual memory management (such as C) and have experience with a higher-level language then you would also be a great fit.
Generally expected knowledge
You may not know everything here, but you should be familiar with most of it.
You know what virtual machines, and containers are
You are familiar with syscalls and can explain them an introductory level
You are familiar with writing multi-threaded, and ideally co-operatively scheduled, programs and the associated knowledge
You are familiar with Linux file descriptors, or the equivalent in other operating systems
Experience with control or event loops, and ideally RPCs
Nice to have
You are familiar with what virtual, and physical memory is (in the context of page tables)
Experience with basic assembly
Understanding of CPU interrupts
Networking knowledge and the ability to explain how some aspects of packet routing work
Experience with asynchronous Rust such as "cancel safety" and its interaction with synchronous Rust
Experience with kernel programming
Benefits
Generous equity grant
Team members are offered a competitive salary along with equity in the company
Visa Sponsorships
Yes, we sponsor visas and work permits
Retirement matching
We match 401(k) plans up to 4%
Medical, dental & vision
We offer competitive medical, dental, vision insurance for employees and dependents and cover 100% of premiums
Time off
We offer unlimited paid time off as well as 10+ observed holidays
Parental leave
We offer biological, adoptive, and foster parents paid time off to spend quality time with family
Daily lunch
We cover lunch daily for employees
Unlimited office book budget
You can buy as many books for the office as you want
The San Francisco Compute Company is committed to maintaining a workplace free from discrimination and harassment.
We make employment decisions based on business needs, job requirements, and individual qualifications, without regard to race, color, religion, belief, national origin, social or ethical origin, age, physical, mental, or sensory disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, civil union or domestic partnership status, past or present military service, HIV status, family medical history or genetic information, family or parental status including pregnancy, or any other status protected by law.
We welcome the opportunity to consider qualified applicants with prior arrest or conviction records. Our commitment to diversity includes hiring talented individuals regardless of their criminal history, in accordance with local, state, and federal laws, including San Francisco’s Fair Chance Ordinance and California’s ban-the-box laws.
If you require reasonable accommodation for any reason, please reach out to us at hiring@sfcompute.com
