Storage Engineer, AI Cluster Commissioning

Storage Engineer, AI Cluster Commissioning

Role is open for candidates with existing Australian working rights. 

To be successful for the role you need to have:

• Hands-on experience deploying, configuring, testing, managing High-Performance & Scale-Out Storage Systems

  (e.g. VAST Data, Weka, IBM Storage Scale (GPFS), PowerScale, Ceph, Lustre, and/or other high performance block and object storage solutions)

• Experience designing/planning/executing benchmarks and acceptance tests.

• Experience toubleshooting Linux-based storage environments, investigating filesystem, networking, and storage performance issues, analyzing system logs and diagnostics, resolving operational issues across storage servers and client systems

• Experience automating storage deployment and configuration, implementing Infrastructure as Code practices, developing monitoring and alerting solutions (e.g. Ansible, Python, git, Prometheus, Grafana, Zabbix, etc. - the more the better)

Firmus Technologies

Firmus Technologies is a global leader pioneering the development and operation of efficient AI infrastructure across Asia Pacific.

Founded in Australia in 2019, our mission is to create the most efficient AI infrastructure by combining cutting-edge technology with a steadfast commitment to sustainability. 

At Firmus, we are unique in our approach. We design, build, and operate a new class of digital infrastructure - the AI Factory. Through our model-to-grid technology approach, we have pushed the boundaries of multi-generational liquid cooling systems, energy management, AI software orchestration, and construction. For our customers, this approach allows us to make every watt count and deliver low-cost AI tokens globally.

Firmus AI Cloud

Our large-scale GPU cloud platform, Firmus AI Cloud, is purpose-built to deliver energy-efficient AI compute at scale to customers.

It empowers developers, enterprises, educational institutions, and government users to train and deploy AI models with unmatched efficiency and cost savings. With an ever-growing suite of services and applications, we are committed to delivering a cloud experience that is market-leading, proprietary, and built to scale.

Why Firmus?

As an NVIDIA Cloud and Engineering partner in Asia Pacific, you will gain skills, experience, and exposure across the AI industry and be part of shaping what this industry looks like for decades to come.

We are founder-led, not a big corporate. Decisions happen fast, our leaders are accessible, and there's minimum bureaucracy between you and the work. Ownership comes early. Whatever your role, you will have a direct line to outcomes, helping shape how the business grows as we scale nationally across a long-term, large-scale roadmap. 

Work alongside founders and experts in AI infrastructure, energy systems and next-generation compute.

What we build here has impact beyond the business. Our AI Factories are designed to operate as assets to the energy grid to actively strengthen the communities and regions they operate in rather than drawing from them.

Considering applying? You don't need a perfect background to join our team. If you're driven and curious, there's a path for you. We back our people to grow into new domains and take on challenges beyond their previous experience.

Role Summary

Firmus Technologies is seeking a skilled Storage Engineer to join our Commissioning team. This position will play a crucial role in the deployment, commissioning, and configuration of our storage solutions for AI infrastructure projects. This role offers an exciting opportunity to work at the forefront of AI storage technology and contribute to the growth of AI infrastructure.

Key Responsibilities

Deploy and Commission High-Performance Storage Systems

• Deploy, configure, monitor, optimise, and troubleshoot high-performance, high-throughput storage systems.
• Configure, test, diagnose, remediate, and benchmark performance of high-end network storage solutions, parallel filesystems, large scale storage and archive systems.
• Work with partners and vendors to respond to and resolve storage system issues identified during the bring-up and commissioning of large-scale AI platforms.
• Analyse logs, run diagnostics and coordinate with internal teams, partners, and vendors as required.
• Develop and maintain monitoring tools to proactively identify bottlenecks, errors and abnormal behaviours.
• Test configurations, performance, redundant paths and other aspects as set out in the commissioning test plan and acceptance tests.

Scale-out filesystems

• Deploy, monitor, and troubleshoot high-end scale-out filesystems.
• Maintain storage configurations and ensure system health using vendor and open source tools.
• Perform verification and acceptance tests for new storage systems.
• Understand various storage platforms (block, file, object), storage protocols (iSCSI, NFS, SMB, parallel filesystems) and use performance tools to monitor storage system health and performance.
• Enable and test optimised storage solutions for AI frameworks and work closely with partners and vendors to ensure efficient access.
• Perform deep dive diagnostics to resolve issues across HPC and AI workloads.

Storage Configuration as Code and Automation

• Develop and maintain automated storage configurations using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools.
• Implement CI/CD pipelines for configuration changes to improve speed, consistency, and auditability.
• Automate routine tasks such as provisioning, backups and compliance checks.

Project Management and Stakeholder Management

• Support the deployment team in their project management and resource allocation for the storage portion of AI cluster installations.
• Collaborate and work closely with the Global Operations Centre, Software Defined Infrastructure team, Data Centre Infrastructure team and Solution Architects to integrate new deployments.
• Work closely with both the Firmus Engineering and Operations teams to align storage infrastructure with customers’ requirements.
• Execute and analyse storage benchmark workloads using tools such as fio, mdtest, ior, and vendor-provided benchmarking tools.
• Validate throughput, latency, metadata performance, resilience, and failure recovery characteristics.
• Facilitate knowledge sharing and communication between teams and create and maintain comprehensive technical documentation.
• Maintain and build strong relationships with key technology partners and vendors and proactively manage and coordinate partner engagement on site.

Data Storage Security and Data Management

• Implement authentication and access controls for storage systems.
• Implement secure configurations for storage systems, including multi-tenant workload isolation.
• Support vulnerability management: coordinate scanning, patching, and remediation tracking for storage infrastructure.
• Collaborate with Security and Risk team to enforce policies and respond to security incidents.
• Participate in security incident response - detection, containment, root cause analysis, and post-incident reporting - with the Security and Risk team.
• Integrate storage telemetry and logs with SIEM/observability tooling for security monitoring.

Technology Expertise

• Provide technical support and troubleshooting for advanced storage technologies, escalating to vendors as needed.

Skills & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in IT, software engineering, computer science, or a related technical field.
• 5+ years of experience deploying, operating, troubleshooting, or commissioning enterprise, HPC, cloud, or AI storage infrastructure.
• Experience with physical storage hardware and advanced storage technologies, including network attached filesystems, parallel filesystems, object storage systems, proprietary and open-source storage solutions.
• Experience with one or more modern scale-out storage platforms such as VAST Data, Weka, IBM Storage Scale (GPFS), Dell PowerScale, Ceph, or Lustre.
• Experience with block, file, and object storage systems and storage protocols including NFS, SMB, S3, iSCSI, NVMe-oF
• Testing and benchmarking tools and processes to validate performance, and acceptance tests.
• Strong Linux administration and troubleshooting skills, including storage, networking, performance monitoring, and system diagnostics.
• Experience with high performance filesystems.
• Strong project management skills and experienced in complex technical projects.
• Excellent problem-solving and analytical skills.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Strong communication skills, both written and verbal.
• Willingness to undertake international and/or domestic travel for on-site deployments and commissioning as required.
• Solid understanding of advanced storage technologies, particularly those related to AI would be highly advantageous.

Location & Reporting

This role is based in Australia or Singapore with regular visits to current and future project sites in Australia and SE Asia.

Report to: Head of AI Cluster Commissioning

Employment Basis: Full-time