Staff Software Engineer, Cluster Orchestration

About the role

As part of the Cluster Orchestration team, you will play a key role in advancing CoreWeave’s orchestration platform including SUNK (Slurm on Kubernetes) and beyond, our Kubernetes-native foundation that powers AI training and inference at scale. This is an opportunity to help shape one of the most critical layers of the AI cloud: ensuring workloads run seamlessly, reliably, and efficiently across massive GPU clusters. By building the systems that eliminate infrastructure bottlenecks and create new orchestration capabilities, you will directly empower customers to innovate faster and push the boundaries of what’s possible with AI.

What You’ll Do

As a Staff Engineer, you will be a technical leader shaping the long-term strategy for CoreWeave’s orchestration platform. You’ll define architectural direction, own critical parts of the orchestration platform and other managed services, and drive cross-org initiatives in scheduling, quota enforcement, and scaling at hyperscale. You’ll mentor senior engineers, establish org-wide best practices in reliability and observability, and ensure CoreWeave’s orchestration layer evolves to meet the demands of next-generation AI workloads.

Who You Are

• 8+ years of software engineering experience.
• Proven track record designing and operating large-scale distributed systems in production.
• Deep expertise in Slurm/Kubernetes internals and cloud-native development.
• Advanced proficiency in Go and distributed systems design and cloud-native development.
• Experience setting technical direction and influencing cross-team architecture.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in CS, EE, or related field.

Preferred

• Familiarity with orchestration and workflow technologies such as Ray, Kubeflow, Kueue, Istio, Knative, or Argo Workflows
• Deep expertise in Slurm/Kubernetes internals.
• Experience with distributed workloads, GPU-based applications, or ML pipelines.
• Knowledge of scheduling concepts like quota enforcement, pre-emption, and scaling strategies.
• Exposure to reliability practices including SLOs, alarms, and post-incident reviews.
• Experience with AI infrastructure and workloads (ML training, inference, or HPC).
• Ability to mentor senior engineers and elevate organizational standards.

Wondering if you’re a good fit?

• You love defining long-term architecture for systems at global scale.
• You’re curious about orchestration beyond SUNK and how to evolve it for next-generation AI.
• You’re an expert at mentorship, architecture, and operational excellence across teams.
• You thrive on solving problems that balance cost, performance, and reliability in high-demand environments.

Why CoreWeave?

At CoreWeave, we work hard, have fun, and move fast!  We’re in an exciting stage of hyper-growth that you will not want to miss out on. We’re not afraid of a little chaos, and we’re constantly learning. Our team cares deeply about how we build our product and how we work together, which is represented through our core values: 

• Be Curious at Your Core
• Act Like an Owner
• Empower Employees
• Deliver Best-in-Class Client Experiences
• Achieve More Together

We support and encourage an entrepreneurial outlook and independent thinking. We foster an environment that encourages collaboration and provides the opportunity to develop innovative solutions to complex problems. As we get set for take off, the growth opportunities within the organization are constantly expanding. You will be surrounded by some of the best talent in the industry, who will want to learn from you, too. Come join us! 

The base salary range for this role is $185,000 to $275,000. The starting salary will be determined based on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and market location. We strive for both market alignment and internal equity when determining compensation. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package includes a discretionary bonus, equity awards, and a comprehensive benefits program (all based on eligibility).