Senior System Administrator
SambaNova Systems
·- Location
- San Jose, California, United States · San Jose, CA
- Workplace
- Remote
- Type
- Full-time
- Department
- Engineering
- Seniority
- Senior
Description
SambaNova is a leader in next-generation AI infrastructure, delivering a full-stack inference platform for customers worldwide. At the core of SambaNova's technology is the RDU (Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit) — a chip built on a dataflow architecture rather than the traditional GPU model. Its decode performance is especially strong for agentic workloads like multi-turn agents, code generation, and long-running applications. RDUs are packaged into SambaRack, rack-scale hardware that lets customers deploy state-of-the-art models with better performance, greater energy efficiency, and faster time to value.
About the role
SambaNova is scaling from rack-scale systems to global AI compute clusters, and the Linux fleet underneath that growth has to be provisioned, upgraded, and kept running without drift. We're looking for a Senior System Administrator to own that layer end to end, across our own data centers and the environments we run for customers.
Responsibilities
In this role you'll deploy and operate a heterogeneous fleet that runs from x86 servers to several different AI accelerators, and keep it healthy as the hardware mix changes. You'll administer multiple infrastructures serving different business functions, each with its own users, workloads, and uptime expectations. Across all of it, you'll use automation to make the environment more efficient and more responsive, so that fleet changes are repeatable rather than applied by hand.
Required Qualifications
- 5+ years performing system administration duties at scale
- Deep working knowledge of Red Hat based distributions
- Hands-on experience with core infrastructure services, including PXE, kickstart, DNS, DHCP, NTP, NFS, and LDAP
- System provisioning
- Ansible and other automation tooling
- Revision control systems
- System, application, and network debugging
- Experience in a high performance computing environment
- Experience with job schedulers
- Telemetry and monitoring
- End user support
- Basic networking knowledge
- Basic programming and scripting skills
- Documentation of systems, procedures, and runbooks
- Thrives in a fast paced environment
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with emerging and maturing hardware
- Debian based distributions
- Containerization experience (Docker, Kubernetes, etc.)
- Virtualization experience
- Infrastructure as code
- Security
- Advanced networking knowledge
- Familiarity with network based storage solutions such as NetApp
- Hyperscaler experience
Location
- SF Bay Area strongly preferred
- Remote considered for an exceptional candidate, subject to time zone review
Base Salary Range:
Submission Guidelines
Please note that in order to be considered an applicant for any position at SambaNova Systems, you must submit an application form for each position for which you believe you are qualified.
EEO Policy
SambaNova Systems is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard basis of age (40 and over), color, disability, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, national origin/ancestry, race, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding), sexual orientation, and any other applicable status protected by federal, state, or local laws.
Benefits Summary for US-Based, Full-Time Employment Positions
SambaNova offers a competitive total rewards package, including the base salary, plus equity and benefits. We cover 95% premium coverage for employee medical insurance, and 77% premium coverage for dependents and offer a Health Savings Account (HSA) with employer contribution. We also offer Dental, Vision, Short/Long term Disability, Basic Life, Voluntary Life, and AD&D insurance plans in addition to Flexible Spending Account (FSA) options like Health Care, Limited Purpose, and Dependent Care. Our library of well-being benefits available to you and your dependents includes a full subscription to Headspace, Gympass+ membership with access to physical gyms, One Medical membership, counseling services with an Employee Assistance Program, and much more.