CoreWeave is looking for a Principal Engineer to lead the design and evolution of the cluster orchestration systems that power our large-scale GPU clusters for AI infrastructure. You will define the long-term architecture, solve complex scaling problems, and set technical direction across teams, directly impacting customer workloads, GPU efficiency, and platform reliability.
What You'll Do
- Define the long-term architecture for CoreWeave’s orchestration platforms across Kubernetes, Slurm, SUNK, Kueue, and related systems.
- Act as a technical authority on scheduling, quota enforcement, fairness, pre-emption, and multi-tenant GPU isolation.
- Make design decisions that balance performance, reliability, cost, and operational complexity.
- Lead the evolution of Kubernetes-native control planes, including SUNK and custom operators.
- Design systems that support workload admission, validation, and rollout, including model onboarding flows.
- Identify and remove scaling limits across schedulers, control planes, registries, networking, and storage.
- Set standards for reliability, observability, and operational readiness across orchestration services.
- Define SLOs, alerting, and incident response practices for platform-critical systems.
- Ensure systems behave predictably during failures, peak load, and rapid growth.
- Write and review production code for Kubernetes controllers, schedulers, admission logic, and internal tooling.
- Measure and improve scheduling latency, container startup time, image distribution, and cold-start performance.
- Lead architecture and design reviews across infrastructure teams.
- Mentor senior and staff engineers and help grow technical leaders.
- Influence platform, infrastructure, security, and product teams through clear technical judgment.
- Engage with customers and open-source communities on deep technical topics when needed.
What We're Looking For
- 15+ years of experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems.
- Deep, practical knowledge of Kubernetes and Slurm internals.
- Experience running GPU-heavy platforms for AI training, inference, or HPC workloads.
- Strong background in Go and cloud-native systems development.
- Proven ability to set technical direction across teams without direct authority.
- Comfortable making high-impact technical decisions in complex systems.
- Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in a relevant field, or equivalent experience.
Nice to Have
- Experience with systems such as Kueue, Kubeflow, Argo Workflows, Ray, Istio, or Knative.
- Background in ML platform engineering, model onboarding, or lifecycle management.
- Strong understanding of scheduling strategies, pre-emption, quota enforcement, and elastic scaling.
- Track record of operating highly reliable systems with clear SLOs and incident processes.
- Contributions to Kubernetes, ML infrastructure, or related open-source projects.
- Experience mentoring senior engineers and raising engineering standards.
Technical Stack
- Kubernetes
- Slurm
- SUNK
- Kueue
- Go
Benefits & Compensation
- Compensation: $206,000 to $303,000
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance - 100% paid for by CoreWeave
- Company-paid Life Insurance
- Voluntary supplemental life insurance
- Short and long-term disability insurance
- Flexible Spending Account
- Health Savings Account
- Tuition Reimbursement
- Ability to Participate in Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)
- Mental Wellness Benefits through Spring Health
- Family-Forming support provided by Carrot
- Paid Parental Leave
- Flexible, full-service childcare support with Kinside
- 401(k) with a generous employer match
- Flexible PTO
- Catered lunch each day in our office and data center locations
- A casual work environment
- A work culture focused on innovative disruption
Work Mode
This is a hybrid position.
CoreWeave is an equal opportunity employer, committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive workplace. All qualified applicants and candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, or genetic information.
