Lead Network Engineer

About Us

We are an early-stage technology company operating at the intersection of Energy and AI infrastructure , focused on developing a new generation of efficient and scalable computing infrastructure.

Our approach combines distributed computing, modular infrastructure and energy efficiency to support the rapidly growing demand for AI and high-performance computing.

The company is developing a new model for deploying compute capacity in a flexible and scalable way, with a strong focus on efficiency, sustainability, reliability and responsible infrastructure development .

This is an opportunity to join a growing team at an early stage and contribute directly to the development of a new infrastructure platform, working at the intersection of power, data centers and advanced computing .

Position Type

Part of the Engineering team, reporting to the CTO. Senior role and network design authority, with the Datacenter & HPC Fabric Engineer reporting to you

Role Overview

We are seeking a Lead Network Engineer to own the network between our Pods: self-contained, outdoor-deployable AI/HPC compute systems meshed into sovereign clusters across dispersed sites. You will own the inter-pod network, the connectivity of the workloads running on our Kubernetes platform, and network automation, and set the overall network architecture, while a dedicated Fabric Engineer owns the high-performance network inside the pod. Our lab already runs an encrypted mesh between sites with cellular and satellite backup: these are current choices, not dogma, and we expect you to challenge them.

What You Will Deliver

This is a high-impact, high-ownership role: your design will ship in every unit and every cluster we deploy.

In your first year: You will take the inter-pod network, the cluster networking, and the network automation from lab to production, then validate a multi-pod sovereign mesh on real field deployments: automated, observable, and ready to scale into series deployment.

Key Responsibilities

• Own the end-to-end network architecture, addressing plan, and design reviews, and make the technology choices
• Design and operate a resilient, encrypted mesh between sites, with dynamic routing and failover across heterogeneous, sometimes constrained uplinks
• Own Kubernetes networking: how workloads are connected, exposed, and isolated inside and across clusters
• Implement segmentation and tenant isolation according to the policy defined by the Head of Security
• Own network automation and observability, so every new pod is provisioned and monitored without manual work
• Support field deployments, write runbooks, and mentor the Fabric Engineer

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Telecommunications, Networking, or equivalent field
• 6-10 years of hands-on networking in service-provider, cloud/hosting, or multi-site/edge environments, including time as technical lead or design authority
• A track record of designing and running a production network spanning many sites, with dynamic routing, VPN overlays, and failover
• Experience running networking for a production Kubernetes or cloud platform
• Experience automating network operations as code, at scale
• English speaking

Nice to Have

• Deployments at remote or edge sites with poor or intermittent connectivity
• Experience at a cloud provider, ISP, or operator building its own infrastructure
• Familiarity with our current stack (e.g. WireGuard, BGP, Cilium/eBPF, Talos, NetBox), or strong reasons to propose alternatives
• Prior experience at a hardware or infrastructure startup or scale-up

Salary Expectation

RAL 50.000€ - 100.000€ + equity (The compensation package will be determined based on the candidate's seniority, experience, and level of expertise.)

Location

Milan, Italy. On-site.