---
title: 'HPC/ GPU Cluster Architect at The San Francisco Compute Company'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/hpc-gpu-cluster-architect-the-san-francisco-compute-company-san-francisco-sbe1f8983vfw'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# HPC/ GPU Cluster Architect at The San Francisco Compute Company

- **Company:** The San Francisco Compute Company
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $220k–$300k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-08-24
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sfcompute/4b20fd99-8536-4a62-ad74-b7ba98f126be

## Job description

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

GPU clusters are some of the most performant computers on the planet. Even smaller clusters by today’s standards would have ranked in the TOP500 https://top500.org five years ago. Our infrastructure team is responsible for architecting and deploying new clusters around the world and keeping them running smoothly. You’ll participate in on-call rotation, deploy new environments, fix issues when they arise, and lean into automation to enable deployments at scale. We’re a small but ambitious team so you’ll be an early contributor helping to shape culture, mentor junior engineers, and learn from our customers.

## ABOUT YOU

- You will have 5+ years of experience with hands-on designing, architecting and scaling at least one HPC or GPU compute cluster in production (ideally >1,000 GPUs, but not required)
- You deeply understand server hardware fundamentals, including GPUs, NICs, PCIe, memory, thermals, and power
- You’re comfortable debugging performance and reliability issues across hardware, OS, drivers, and networking layers; full-stack.
- The idea of automating fleet operations (provisioning, monitoring, remediation) excites you — you embrace infrastructure-as-code
- You appreciate, value, and generate strong operational documentation and runbooks
- You have the ability and willingness to mentor junior engineers and contribute to team culture
- You’re open to coming in to our San Francisco office 3–4 days per week
- You’re open to domestic travel when required

## SOME NICE TO HAVES

- Familiarity with data center operations including power, cooling, and colo/vendor engagements
- Strong Linux systems administration experience, including kernel drivers, RDMA stack tuning, and performance analysis
- Experience with schedulers and orchestration systems such as Slurm and Kubernetes
- Exposure to virtualization technologies (KVM, QEMU, libvirt)
- Experience utilizing telemetry pipelines for predictive hardware failure detection
- Experience troubleshooting high-speed fabrics such as InfiniBand and/or RoCEv2 Ethernet

## 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.

## About The San Francisco Compute Company

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: San Francisco Compute provides large-scale, vetted GPU clusters with flexible, short-term contracts and a liquid market that lets customers sublease unused capacity.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series A; $52M total funding)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Evan Conrad (Co-Founder)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI infrastructure / GPU cloud computing
- **Target customers**: AI startups, enterprises, and research labs needing large-scale GPU clusters for pre-training, inference, and high-performance computing
- **Mission or purpose**: “De-risk the largest infrastructure build‑out in history” by creating a liquid market for GPU offtake, allowing companies to exit long-term contracts by selling capacity back to the market.

## Products & Services
- **GPU Cluster Rentals (H100 / H200)**: Virtual machines (VMs) and bare-metal clusters with 3.2 Tb/s InfiniBand fabric, parallel storage, and fast networking. Pricing starts at $2.04/hr per H100 node and fluctuates with market conditions. [sfcompute.com](https://sfcompute.com/)
- **Managed Slurm Clusters**: For customers who need a fully managed HPC scheduler environment. [sfcompute.com](https://sfcompute.com/)
- **Liquid Market for Offtake**: Customers can sign long-term contracts but then “sell back” unused capacity on a central limit order book, reducing the risk of being locked into fixed commitments. [sfcompute.com](https://sfcompute.com/about)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – $52M (Series A: $40M led by Wing Venture Capital and DCVC in November 2025; earlier venture round: $12M led by Altman Capital in July 2024) [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/san-francisco-compute-company)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Wing Venture Capital, DCVC, Altman Capital
- **Growth Signals**: 112% YoY headcount growth (35 employees); featured in The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and The New York Times; operates thousands of GPUs with ~1hr average lead time for scaling; active job postings for engineering roles. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/sfcompute)

## Competitive Advantages
- **Flexible contracts**: No forced long-term commitments; customers can exit by selling capacity on the liquid market.
- **Own infrastructure stack**: Runs its own virtualization and bare-metal software, unlike a pure reseller.
- **Fast provisioning**: VMs spin up in about 5 minutes; large clusters in ~1 hour.
- **Failure-tolerant design**: Refunds for failed nodes and can repack healthy hardware.
- **Dedicated support**: Large clusters get a dedicated Slack channel with the engineering team and emergency phone escalation.

## Strategic Focus
- **Building the GPU offtake marketplace**: Enabling lenders and cluster developers to de-risk financing by offering customers an exit mechanism.
- **Expanding InfiniBand support**: Planning to offer InfiniBand on VMs in Q3 2026 (currently available on bare metal and managed Slurm).
- **Scaling operations**: Growing the team (currently 35) and continuing to expand cluster capacity in multiple regions (US, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Australia).

## Why Work Here
- **Engineering-led culture**: 32% of employees are in technical roles; the team builds and operates the full stack from UEFI up.
- **Small, fast-moving team**: 35 employees with 112% YoY growth, offering ownership and impact.
- **Location**: In-person culture in San Francisco (“the great city of progress”).
- **Notable perks**: Direct access to engineering, hands-on experience with cutting-edge GPU infrastructure, and the chance to solve novel problems in AI infrastructure financing.
- **Open roles** (6 active postings): Software Engineer (Systems, Cloud, Product), HPC/GPU Cluster Architect, Technical Program Manager, People & Talent Acquisition Leader. [jobs.ashbyhq.com](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sfcompute)

## Sources
1. [sfcompute.com](https://sfcompute.com/) – Official website, pricing, FAQ
2. [sfcompute.com/about](https://sfcompute.com/about) – Mission, business model, market concept
3. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/sfcompute](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sfcompute) – Careers page, open roles
4. [linkedin.com/company/sfcompute](https://www.linkedin.com/company/sfcompute) – Company details, headcount, funding, employee breakdown
5. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/san-francisco-compute-company) – Funding rounds, investors, headquarters

## Other roles at The San Francisco Compute Company

- [People Operations Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/people-operations-manager-the-san-francisco-compute-company-san-francisco-9b8dk81rsqz1) — San Francisco, CA
- [Account Executive Supply Chain](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-supply-chain-the-san-francisco-compute-company-san-francisco-zpz7j73v2gma) — San Francisco, CA
- [General Counsel](https://feeny.ai/job/general-counsel-the-san-francisco-compute-company-san-francisco-qq9v7whjqgmg) — San Francisco, CA
- [Staff Design Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-design-engineer-the-san-francisco-compute-company-san-francisco-ysj84b7g1kte) — San Francisco, CA