At a Glance
- Tasks: Design and build a shared GPU scheduling layer for AI workloads.
- Company: Join Verda, a pioneering AI cloud company with a global presence.
- Benefits: Competitive cash and equity compensation, plus local perks.
- Other info: Dynamic team with diverse backgrounds and excellent career growth opportunities.
- Why this job: Make a real impact in AI infrastructure alongside world-class engineers.
- Qualifications: 5+ years in platform engineering with strong Go or Python skills.
The predicted salary is between 75600 - 92400 £ per year.
At Verda, we're building a full-stack AI cloud, covering everything from data centers and hardware to our own cloud platform that the world's leading AI teams use to do serious AI work.
We strive to make a positive mark on the world through the infrastructure we build and give leading teams a service they can truly depend on.
Headquartered in Helsinki, we operate globally with offices in London and San Francisco.
Join Verda while it’s still being built - not once it’s finished.
- Why Verda
- Cash and equity compensation along with local benefits.
- 40+ nationalities, with 6 different ones on the management team.
- A real chance to make an impact and work alongside world class engineers, researchers, and partners across the global AI ecosystem.
About The Role
Most GPU clusters are split into silos.
Capacity sits idle in one silo while another is starved.
As a Senior Cluster Orchestration Engineer, you build the layer that turns these silos into one shared cluster, where training, inference and batch workloads run on the same GPUs and capacity moves between them automatically.
This is a software development role in our AI Infrastructure team.
You write the schedulers, controllers and platform services that make shared capacity work on Kubernetes and SLURM.
You work closely with the engineers who run our GPU fleets and with the teams building customer products on top.
The team is small, so you have direct influence on the architecture and a short path from idea to production, on state-of-the‑art GPU hardware at real scale.
- Your Responsibilities
- Design and build the scheduling layer that lets training, inference and batch workloads share GPU capacity across Kubernetes and SLURM.
- Build support for perishable compute: capacity that is free only for a short window, such as idle reservations, spot‑like capacity or gaps between jobs.
Fill it with short‑lived and preemptible work, and reclaim it cleanly when higher‑priority work needs it.
- Implement gang scheduling, topology‑aware placement and preemption for multi‑node training with Volcano, KAI Scheduler, Kueue or Slurm Bridge.
Contribute upstream, or build custom components where these tools fall short.
- Develop Kubernetes operators and controllers for quotas, priorities, fair‑share and queueing, and for the cluster lifecycle: creation, scaling, upgrades, health checks and decommissioning.
- Solve the hard interactions between workload types: elastic and checkpoint‑aware training, latency‑sensitive inference autoscaling and batch backfill, all competing for the same GPUs.
- Build observability for scheduling and utilisation, including queue depth, wait times, fragmentation, preemption rates, GPU utilisation and SLOs for key platform services.
- Deliver the platform through Git Ops, with declarative configuration, drift detection and safe rollout and recovery.
- Your key competencies
- 5+ years in platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, SRE or a related field, or equivalent expertise, and a track record of taking projects from design through deployment and maintenance.
- Strong software development skills in Go (preferred) or Python, including production Kubernetes controllers or operators.
You pay attention to API design, concurrency, idempotency, retries and error recovery.
- Deep Kubernetes knowledge: the scheduler, the scheduling framework and its extension points, the control plane, networking, storage and node lifecycle.
- Hands‑on experience with batch or AI workload schedulers such as Volcano, KAI Scheduler, Kueue or Slurm Bridge, and a clear understanding of gang scheduling, queueing, quotas, preemption and fair‑share.
- Experience running GPU workloads, including device plugins, GPU‑aware scheduling and the practical limits of multi‑node training and latency‑sensitive inference.
- Familiarity with SLURM, and an understanding of how HPC‑style and cloud‑native scheduling models differ.
- Practicalities
- Location: London (UK) or Helsinki (Finland), where we have offices. If you're based elsewhere in Europe, you can also work remotely.
- Employment type: Full time and permanent
- What's Next
We're building fast and this role needs the right person behind it. There's no artificial deadline, but when we find who we're looking for, we move.
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Senior Cluster Orchestration Engineer in London employer: Verda
Verda is an exceptional employer that fosters a vibrant multicultural work environment, making it an ideal place for a Technical Account Manager to thrive. With competitive cash and equity compensation, along with opportunities to collaborate with innovative AI companies, employees are encouraged to grow and develop their skills while managing impactful technical relationships. The company's commitment to enhancing customer experience and providing robust support ensures that team members feel valued and empowered in their roles.
StudySmarter Expert Advice🤫
We think this is how you could land Senior Cluster Orchestration Engineer in London
✨Join Local Tech Meetups
Get out there and mingle with fellow developers by joining local tech meetups. It’s a fantastic way to meet people who might be working at Verda or know someone who does. Plus, you can pick up some trendy tech skills and trends while you're at it!
✨Contribute to Open Source Projects
Show off your coding chops by jumping into open-source projects. Not only does this give you practical experience, but it also gets you noticed in the dev community. You'll create a killer portfolio that speaks volumes about your skills to Verda.
✨Tap into Online Developer Communities
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We think you need these skills to ace Senior Cluster Orchestration Engineer in London
Some tips for your application 🫡
Show off your coding skills:When applying for a software engineering role, it's super important to showcase your coding skills. Make sure your CV includes your tech stack, any relevant programming languages you’re comfortable with, and examples of projects you've worked on. If you have a GitHub profile, link it up! We love to see code in action.
Tailor your portfolio:For a full-time role, we’d expect to see some solid examples of your work in your portfolio. Make sure to include at least two or three projects that highlight your problem-solving skills and your ability to work with different technologies. Focus on the projects that are most relevant to the position at Verda.
Craft a killer cover letter:Your cover letter is your chance to stand out—make it personal! Explain why you want to work at Verda and how your skills align with the role. Show us your passion for software development. We dig enthusiastic candidates who understand the value of collaboration and continuous learning!
Be clear and concise:When it comes to writing your CV and cover letter, clarity is key. Avoid jargon that could confuse us and stick to simple, direct language. Highlight your achievements with quantifiable results where possible, and keep everything easy to read. A well-organised application goes a long way!
How to prepare for a job interview at Verda
✨Brush Up on Your Coding Skills
For a full-time software engineering role, it's crucial that we stay sharp with our coding abilities. Expect technical questions that might involve solving problems on the spot or discussing algorithms. Practise on platforms like LeetCode or HackerRank to get comfortable with the types of questions that often come up.
✨Know Your Tools and Frameworks
Make sure we’re well-acquainted with the tools and technologies listed in the job description. Familiarise ourselves with any specific frameworks or programming languages mentioned. If Verda uses React or Node.js, for instance, be ready to discuss how we’ve used them in previous projects or coursework.
✨Showcase Your Projects
Bring along a portfolio that highlights our best work. This could be code samples, GitHub repositories, or any side projects we’ve built. Make sure we can talk through our thought process for each project, especially the challenges we faced and how we solved them—this shows our problem-solving skills in action.
✨Prepare for Behavioural Questions
While technical skills are key, full-time positions also require cultural fit. Be ready to discuss our previous experiences and how we handle teamwork, conflict, and deadlines. Brush up on the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—to clearly articulate our past experiences when discussing how we've contributed to a team.
