---
title: 'Systems Operations Support Engineer — Linux at Vast.ai'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/systems-operations-support-engineer-linux-vast-ai-los-angeles-v3hjj8k7jj4v'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-10'
---

# Systems Operations Support Engineer — Linux at Vast.ai

- **Company:** Vast.ai
- **Location:** Los Angeles, CA
- **Compensation:** $90k–$150k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-07-30
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-10
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/vastai/a19ce91a-a939-45dc-8efc-849279bd1fc5

## Job description

## About Us

[Vast.ai](http://Vast.ai)'s cloud powers AI projects and businesses all over the world. We are democratizing and decentralizing AI computing — reshaping our future for the benefit of humanity. Our mission is to organize, optimize, and orient the world's computation. We value elegance, ownership, integrity, and continuous learning. You'll have the opportunity to dive into state-of-the-art AI systems while collaborating with a globally distributed team.

## About the Role

This is a systems operations support role focused on deep-diving into escalated infrastructure issues that go beyond frontline triage. You’ll be the engineering resource our L1 support team relies on when tickets become complex, investigating and resolving issues across the full infrastructure stack—including hardware, BIOS and firmware, networking, Ubuntu, Docker, NVIDIA CUDA and GPUs, and KVM virtual machines. You’ll own complex escalations end-to-end: gathering evidence, reproducing issues, identifying the root cause, proposing solutions, and working with the appropriate teams to bring each issue to resolution. The best engineers in this role don’t just resolve individual tickets—they identify recurring patterns, improve operational tooling, and build runbooks that prevent future incidents. You’ll collaborate directly with the engineering and host support teams on systemic infrastructure issues. Strong Linux systems knowledge, technical depth, and support experience are the primary requirements. You should be comfortable working autonomously in Ubuntu environments, troubleshooting hardware, networking, containers, virtual machines, and GPU workloads, and clearly communicating your findings and proposed solutions to both technical and non-technical audiences. [Vast.ai](http://Vast.ai) users or hosts strongly preferred.

Location and Schedule This is a full-time position based in our Westwood, Los Angeles office. Available schedules:

- Monday–Friday: Fully on-site
- Sunday–Thursday: Four days on-site and one day working from home

## Key Responsibilities

- Handle escalated support tickets involving GPU workload failures, container issues, networking problems, account infrastructure, and host-side configuration
- Provide managed support for supplier onboarding and ongoing machine management, acting as a technical resource through installation, configuration, and post-setup troubleshooting
- Assist clients and infrastructure suppliers working with TensorFlow, PyTorch, and other GPU-accelerated workloads
- Provide coverage for L1 support overflow during peak periods or incidents
- Diagnose and resolve issues across Docker, NVIDIA CUDA/GPU drivers, and KVM virtualization environments
- Troubleshoot network-layer issues, including VLAN, DNS, DHCP, VPN, NAT, firewall rules, and connectivity failures on host machines
- Investigate performance issues involving GPU utilization, container resource constraints, thermal throttling, driver conflicts, and disk I/O bottlenecks
- Advise suppliers on installation best practices, including hardware setup, driver configuration, BIOS/firmware settings, and network configuration for optimal performance
- Write and maintain internal runbooks, escalation guides, and knowledge base articles to reduce repeat escalations
- Build diagnostic and automation tooling in Python and Bash to reduce manual triage overhead
- Collaborate with the engineering and support teams to flag and document systemic or recurring platform issues

You Are

- Experienced with Linux, especially Ubuntu, and comfortable troubleshooting from the command line
- Someone who enjoys debugging difficult problems and fixing broken systems
- Methodical and focused on finding root causes, not just temporary fixes
- Able to manage complex tickets independently
- A clear written communicator with an interest in AI infrastructure and GPU computing

Must-Haves

- Strong Linux systems operations experience with Ubuntu, RHEL/CentOS, or Debian, including networking, storage, services, and permissions
- Proficiency with Docker, including container debugging, Docker Compose, image management, cgroup limits, and Docker storage and filesystem troubleshooting
- Experience with virtualization platforms such as Proxmox VE, VMware, or similar hypervisors, including VM provisioning and troubleshooting
- Strong networking fundamentals, including VLANs, DNS, DHCP, NAT, VPNs, firewall rules, and L2/L3 troubleshooting
- Hands-on experience with NVIDIA GPU drivers, CUDA, and GPU workload troubleshooting
- Python and Bash scripting skills for automation and diagnostic tooling
- Strong written English communication that is clear, professional, and technically precise
- Experience providing technical support in a customer-facing or internal help desk environment
- Ability to prioritize across a concurrent queue of escalated tickets, triaging by severity and customer impact, balancing reactive resolution against proactive documentation and tooling work, and making clear judgment calls on when to escalate versus own resolution end-to-end

Nice-to-Haves

- Familiarity with AI/ML frameworks (TensorFlow, PyTorch) and running GPU-accelerated containers
- Monitoring and observability experience (Prometheus, Grafana)
- Relevant certifications: RHCSA, CompTIA Linux+, or similar
- Knowledge of the [Vast.ai](http://Vast.ai) platform as a client or infrastructure supplier

Interview Process (~1 week) After you submit your application, our technical team will review your experience and qualifications. Selected candidates will proceed through the following stages:

- 15 minutes — Initial Screening (Virtual): A brief conversation about your background, availability, and interest in the role
- 45 minutes — Experience Interview (Virtual): An introduction to [Vast.ai](http://Vast.ai) and a deeper discussion of your technical and support experience
- 2 hours — Meet and Greet and Technical Assessment (On-site): Meet the team and complete an LLM-assisted Linux systems operations assessment

Annual Salary Range $90,000 – $160,000 + equity + benefits [Vast.ai](http://Vast.ai) is hiring across all experience levels with compensation commensurate with background, experience and potential.

## Benefits

- Comprehensive health, dental, vision, and life insurance
- 401(k) with company match
- Meaningful early-stage equity
- Onsite meals, snacks, and close collaboration with founders/tech leaders
- Ambitious, fast-paced startup culture where initiative is rewarded

## About Vast.ai

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Vast.ai operates a decentralized GPU marketplace that enables developers and AI agents to provision and manage compute power across a global network of hardware, offering a cost-effective alternative to hyperscaler clouds.
- **Entity Type**: Private (raised $30M in funding)
- **Headquarters**: Los Angeles, CA (1100 Glendon Ave, STE 1840) and San Francisco, CA (100 1st Street, STE 2250)
- **Founded**: 2016 (incorporated June 28, 2016)
- **Founders**: Jake Cannell (CEO) and Christian Horne

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Cloud infrastructure / GPU compute / AI infrastructure
- **Target customers**: AI researchers, ML engineers, AI agent developers, enterprises needing GPU compute for training and inference
- **Mission**: "To organize, optimize, and orient the world's computation."
- **Vision**: "To make life substrate-independent through Vast Artificial Intelligence."

## Products & Services
- **GPU Cloud**: On-demand instances across 20,000+ GPUs in 40+ data centers. Deploy via CLI, SDK, Python API. Per-second billing. Real-time pricing set by supply and demand. [vast.ai](https://vast.ai/)
- **Serverless Inference**: Deploy models as endpoints with automatic GPU optimization, auto-scaling to zero, pay-per-compute-time. [vast.ai](https://vast.ai/)
- **GPU Clusters**: Dedicated multi-node clusters with InfiniBand networking for large-scale training. [vast.ai](https://vast.ai/)
- **API & SDK**: REST API, Python SDK, CLI for programmatic compute provisioning. Agent-native interface for autonomous compute procurement. [vast.ai](https://vast.ai/)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation**: Not publicly available
- **Key Metric**: Total funding $30M (as of 2026, per jobsbyculture.com) [jobsbyculture.com](https://jobsbyculture.com/blog/working-at-vast-2026)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Not disclosed in available sources
- **Growth Signals**:
  - 310% year-over-year growth (2024–2025)
  - 20,000+ GPUs, 350+ hosts, 700K+ transactions/month
  - SOC 2 Type I certification achieved in 2024
  - Enterprise and Secure Cloud offerings launched; customers include professional data center partners
  - Headcount grew from fully distributed team to 40+ employees across two offices (LA & SF) [vast.ai/about](https://vast.ai/about)
  - Conflicting reports: jobsbyculture.com cites ~30 employees, while vast.ai/about states "40+ employees"

## Competitive Advantages
- **Decentralized marketplace model**: Taps into underutilized GPU hardware (gaming rigs, mining farms, research labs, small data centers) to offer compute at 3–5x cheaper than AWS, no contracts required.
- **Agent-ready infrastructure**: The same API used by developers is designed for AI agents to autonomously procure and optimize compute – a moat for the upcoming agentic economy.
- **Real-time, transparent pricing**: Prices set by supply and demand, programmatically queryable via API. No hidden costs or enterprise sales friction.
- **Heterogeneous hardware support**: 68+ GPU types across 40+ data centers, enabling users to compare and switch between hardware types easily.
- **SOC 2 certified**: Security and compliance for enterprise workloads.

## Strategic Focus
- **Agentic compute**: Building an "infrastructure layer where AI agents design, procure, and optimize their own compute" [vast.ai](https://vast.ai/)
- **Enterprise expansion**: Growing Secure Cloud (certified data centers) and dedicated cluster products for professional customers.
- **Scaling the network**: Increasing GPU count, host partnerships, and geographic diversity while maintaining real-time pricing and low latency.
- **Open infrastructure**: Keeping compute distributed and independent, countering hyperscaler concentration.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: "High level of rigor, precision, and professionalism" – employees are stakeholders who own the impact of their work. Fast-paced startup environment where initiative is rewarded. [vast.ai/about](https://vast.ai/about)
- **Work location**: On-site in Los Angeles (Westwood) or San Francisco (SOMA). Not remote – all current openings require on-site presence.
- **Perks**: Comprehensive health/dental/vision insurance, 401(k) with company match, meaningful early-stage equity, onsite meals and snacks, close collaboration with founders and tech leaders. [vast.ai/jobs](https://vast.ai/jobs)
- **Interview process**: Screened by technical team; stages include a 15-min screening, 45-min deep dive, 1-hour LLM-assisted coding assessment, and 2-hour on-site meet-and-greet. Aim to complete in about one week. [vast.ai/jobs](https://vast.ai/jobs)
- **Salary ranges**: For roles like Senior Infrastructure Engineer and GPU Systems Engineer, posted salary $120K–$180K (may vary by role). [vast.ai/jobs](https://vast.ai/jobs)
- **Engineering culture**: Reports directly to CEO/founder Jake Cannell, a prolific writer on AI and compute scaling theory. Emphasis on systems engineering, GPU optimization, and cutting-edge research.

## Sources
1. [vast.ai/about](https://vast.ai/about)
2. [vast.ai](https://vast.ai/)
3. [vast.ai/jobs](https://vast.ai/jobs)
4. [jobsbyculture.com](https://jobsbyculture.com/blog/working-at-vast-2026)
5. [vast.ai/jobs/apply/systems-gpu-research-engineer](https://vast.ai/jobs/apply/systems-gpu-research-engineer)

## Other roles at Vast.ai

- [Head of Sales](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-sales-vast-ai-los-angeles-yrkth8v89kkh) — Los Angeles, CA
- [Developer Relations Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/developer-relations-engineer-vast-ai-san-francisco-19dx882ce5x1) — San Francisco, CA
- [Controller](https://feeny.ai/job/controller-vast-ai-los-angeles-0d4jvgnj6v48) — Los Angeles, CA
- [AI, HPC & GPU Infrastructure Support Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-hpc-gpu-infrastructure-support-engineer-vast-ai-los-angeles-40e39w8ek9p1) — Los Angeles, CA
- [Technical Product Manager, Infrastructure](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-product-manager-infrastructure-vast-ai-los-angeles-b0h8y0t8d4fy) — Los Angeles, CA
- [Technical Support Engineer II (Linux)](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-support-engineer-ii-linux-vast-ai-los-angeles-0h1q79ajj6kc) — Los Angeles, CA
- [Director of Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-engineering-vast-ai-san-francisco-q3avgemppyhv) — San Francisco, CA
- [Senior Infrastructure Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-infrastructure-engineer-vast-ai-los-angeles-ejanf64s8d34) — Los Angeles, CA
- [Security Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/security-engineer-vast-ai-los-angeles-5p7ef9m994ce) — Los Angeles, CA
- [GPU Systems Engineer – HPC / Parallel Computing](https://feeny.ai/job/gpu-systems-engineer-hpc-parallel-computing-vast-ai-san-francisco-e7dn3x08y2sq) — San Francisco, CA