Principal Lab Services Engineer UK in London

Nscale is the GPU cloud engineered for AI. We provide cost-effective, high-performance infrastructure for AI start-ups and large enterprise customers. Nscale enables AI-focused companies to achieve superior results by reducing the complexity of AI development. Our GPU cloud bolsters technical capabilities and directly supports strategic business outcomes, including cost management, rapid innovation, and environmental responsibility.

At Nscale, our Engineering team plays a critical role in driving the deployment and subsequent management of our infrastructure and software platforms. We thrive on a culture of relentless innovation, ownership, and accountability, where every team member takes pride in their work and drives it with excellence and urgency. As an Nscaler, you’ll build trust through openness and transparency, where everyone is inspired to do their best work. If you join our team, you’ll be contributing to building the technology that powers the future.

About The Role

Please note that this role will not require office presence, but rather presence within one of our labs and/or Datacenters. The Principal Lab Services Engineer will provide senior technical leadership for Nscale’s lab environments, ensuring they are designed, operated, and continuously improved to support hardware development, platform validation, and cluster bring-up. This role will act as the senior technical owner for lab capability, with a strong focus on next-generation GPU infrastructure and the physical requirements needed to support it, including space, power, cooling, networking, and operational readiness. The Principal Lab Services Engineer will play a key role in ensuring that development environments are scalable, reliable, and fit for purpose.

The role will also be central to dogfooding our internal automation and operational tooling, helping to validate that clusters can be brought up, configured, and managed using our own platforms and workflows. This person will work closely with engineering, infrastructure, and lab operations teams to improve the efficiency, consistency, and reliability of lab-based deployment and testing.

What You’ll Be Doing (Responsibilities)

• Provide senior technical ownership of lab environments and the standards that underpin their operation.
• Lead technical planning for lab capacity, including rack space, power, cooling, cabling, networking, and physical deployment requirements.
• Define and maintain technical standards for lab design, hardware installation, cluster bring-up, operational readiness, and lifecycle management.
• Act as the senior technical authority for introducing and supporting next-generation GPU systems in the lab estate.
• Assess infrastructure requirements for new hardware platforms and ensure lab environments are capable of supporting high-density compute workloads.
• Work closely with platform and infrastructure teams to bring up and validate clusters using internal automation and tooling.
• Dogfood internal provisioning, configuration, and cluster management tooling, providing feedback to improve reliability, usability, and operational effectiveness.
• Troubleshoot complex hardware, infrastructure, and environment issues across lab systems.
• Lead root cause analysis and corrective actions for major lab-related incidents or recurring technical problems.
• Produce and maintain runbooks, standards, and technical documentation for lab operations and cluster bring-up.
• Mentor engineers and help raise the technical capability of the wider Lab Services function.
• Partner with facilities, vendors, and internal stakeholders to ensure infrastructure dependencies are understood and managed appropriately.
• Support roadmap planning by translating future engineering and hardware requirements into technical lab capability.

About You

• Deep technical understanding of hardware infrastructure, including servers, storage, networking, and GPU-based platforms.
• Strong knowledge of the physical and operational requirements for next-generation GPU infrastructure, particularly around power, cooling, space, and resilience.
• Strong hands-on experience with cluster bring-up, infrastructure validation, and hardware troubleshooting.
• Good understanding of automation-led infrastructure operations and the practical application of internal tooling in real-world environments.
• Ability to define technical standards and drive consistent operational practices across teams.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, particularly in complex hardware and infrastructure environments.
• Ability to work across hardware, facilities, engineering, and software teams to solve end-to-end operational challenges.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence both technical and operational stakeholders.
• Mentoring capability and a collaborative approach to technical leadership.

Experience

• Significant experience in lab operations, hardware infrastructure, data centre operations, or a similar technical environment.
• Proven experience supporting high-density compute or GPU infrastructure.
• Experience planning or validating infrastructure requirements for new hardware platforms, including power, cooling, rack space, and deployment readiness.
• Experience with bare metal, cluster provisioning, system bring-up, or infrastructure lifecycle operations.
• Experience working closely with platform or software teams to validate automation and improve operational tooling.
• Experience owning complex technical issues from diagnosis through to resolution and prevention.
• Experience producing technical standards, documentation, and operational runbooks.
• Experience in AI, HPC, or large-scale GPU environments would be highly desirable.

What We Can Offer You

At Nscale, you'll find a collaborative, supportive, and innovative environment where your contributions spark real impact. We're building something extraordinary, and we want you at the core. Highly competitive package (base + equity) with reviews every 12 months. Join the fastest-growing tech startup, your chance to push boundaries, collaborate with brilliant minds, and make your mark on cutting-edge AI.

Expect a dynamic progression plan tailored to your ambitions. Grow by trying new things, leading, challenging the status quo, and owning your impact, always with our full support. Human-First Flexibility: We treat you as humans first. Our flexible workplace trusts Nscalers to deliver, giving you the autonomy to shape your day around life's moments. Join our thriving remote-first team. Geography is no barrier to impact or connection. We build seamless virtual collaboration, empowering you, wherever you work.

We strongly encourage applications from people of colour, the LGBTQ+ community, people with disabilities, neurodivergent people, parents, carers, and people from lower socio-economic backgrounds. If there’s anything we can do to accommodate your specific situation, please let us know.