{"id":2655495,"url":"https://alion.io/job/upscale-ai-sr-principal-engineer-scale-up-data-path-features","title":"Sr. Principal Engineer, Scale-Up (Data Path Features)","company":{"id":3854037,"name":"Upscale AI","domain":"upscaleai.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/upscale-ai-2","size_band":"201-500","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Lever","truth_index":{"grade":"B","score":70,"open_postings":20,"ghost_share":0.5,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":null,"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"lead","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"inferred","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":263000,"max":284000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":284000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":15,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"HPC","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false},{"name":"NCCL","optional":false},{"name":"NVLink","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-10-15T17:45:26Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-15","last_verified_at":"2026-10-16T10:43:01Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":0},"description":"Position Overview\nSenior individual-contributor validation role. You own how data-path features are qualified on our scale-up AI networking platform, from the SAI/SDK programming path through ASIC forwarding and traffic-management behavior. You set the test strategy, own feature readiness and release sign-off, debug the hardest cross-stack failures, and grow the QA engineers around you. Primary depth is traffic management. Feature scope (cycle-accurate model and silicon)\nKey Responsibilities\nClassification and marking: DSCP and 802.1p to traffic class, trust, TC-to-queue, remarking, port versus switch map binding, classification miss, ACL rewrite\n\nQueueing: unicast and multicast queues, counters, occupancy, watermarks, drops\n\nScheduling: strict priority, WRR/DWRR, hierarchy, shaping, rate limiting, fairness under oversubscription\n\nBuffering: ingress and egress pools, static and dynamic thresholds, priority groups, headroom, reserved versus shared\n\nPFC and lossless Ethernet: pause, headroom, lossless queues, watchdog, storm and deadlock, DCB\n\nECN and WRED: thresholds, drop probability, ECT/CE, interaction with DCQCN under RoCEv2\n\nPolicing: color-blind and color-aware, CIR/PIR/CBS/PBS, trTCM\n\nForwarding and counters: L2/L3, ECMP, mirror and sample, telemetry that makes the above observable\n\nOwn the validation strategy, test plans, coverage, and release entry/exit criteria for the features above\n\nQualify lossless and congestion behavior under RoCEv2 and GPU collectives (NCCL/RCCL) at line rate, including incast, PFC headroom, ECN accuracy, and no-drop\n\nBuild the frameworks and debug tools the team depends on, including model-based checks of classification, queueing, scheduling, and drop or mark outcomes\n\nLead root-cause analysis across software, SDK, model, silicon, and Linux, and decide when the spec, the implementation, or the test is wrong\n\nMentor QA engineers, review their plans and automation, and represent validation in design reviews and the development-to-QA handoff\n\nSupport customer deployments, proofs of concept, and field issues on data-path and congestion behavior\n\nRequirements\n15+ years in networking software, system validation, or ASIC/platform QA, with a substantial stretch as a senior individual contributor\n\nDeep hands-on traffic management: PFC, scheduling, buffers, classification and marking, queueing, ECN/WRED\n\nStrong L2/L3 and ACL fundamentals, and experience with SAI, a switch SDK, or a NOS such as SONiC or FBOSS\n\nOwnership of validation frameworks and automation, not only test execution\n\nPython or Go at framework-review level; solid Linux and packet- and counter-level debugging\n\nProven mentoring and influence as an individual contributor, and clear written readiness and root-cause reports\n\nPreferred\nEthernet ASIC QA in L2/L3, buffers, scheduling, and queueing\n\nRoCEv2, RDMA, DCB, PFC tuning, and DCQCN on AI or HPC fabrics; NCCL/RCCL on NVIDIA or AMD GPU clusters\n\nASIC bring-up, C-model or emulation, and pre-silicon to post-silicon correlation\n\nBuffer and headroom sizing; incast, microburst, and oversubscription debug\n\nIxia, Keysight, Spirent, or similar line-rate tools\n\nNVLink or ESUN; customer, field, or forward-deployed work is a plus","description_format":"text","description_chars":3212,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":15,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Photo & Video Editing Software","Generative Image"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-15T22:52:32Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 35","filings_12m":35,"filings_prev_12m":0,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":222500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":9}],"liveness":{"score":60,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.602,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":35,"reasons":["conf:3","stale_co","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":284000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/upscale-ai-sr-principal-engineer-scale-up-data-path-features","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/upscale-ai-sr-principal-engineer-scale-up-data-path-features.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-16T12:22:04Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":11503,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-17T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":3854037},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=3854037"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fupscale-ai-sr-principal-engineer-scale-up-data-path-features"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fupscale-ai-sr-principal-engineer-scale-up-data-path-features"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fupscale-ai-sr-principal-engineer-scale-up-data-path-features"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/upscale-ai-sr-principal-engineer-scale-up-data-path-features\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fupscale-ai-sr-principal-engineer-scale-up-data-path-features"}]}