Sthenos

Principal Infrastructure Engineer

Sthenos AI is the AI developer of EFA Group, building intelligent, mission-ready solutions for defense and aerospace. With deep expertise in Command-and-Control (C2), cyber defense, computer vision, and autonomous systems, we design and deploy secure, field-proven AI that enhances operational efficiency and situational awareness. As part of a leading European defense ecosystem, we bring scalable innovation where it matters most — in the theater of operations.

We are looking for a Principal Infrastructure Architect responsible for designing, implementing and maintaining the distributed infrastructure backbone for a customer of Sthenos AI.

Responsibilities

• You architect and manage a highly available, distributed and virtualized data center infrastructure that serves as the foundation for a next generation AI-based intelligence platform. 
• You design and implement the network architecture, compute, storage and virtualization layers of an on-premises environment to ensure scalability, performance and resilience. 
• You design and implement a Kubernetes-based platform for running distributed workloads, ensuring optimal integration with networking, storage and hardware resources. 
• You plan, deploy and operate virtualized infrastructure environments including compute clusters, hypervisors and software-defined networking. 
• You define and implement hardware configurations and infrastructure standards, including server architectures, GPUs, networking equipment and storage systems. 
• You design high-performance networking architectures, including routing, switching, load balancing and secure interconnection between distributed infrastructure components. 
• You operate a variety of different databases and storage solutions and make sure that they run smoothly and according to the performance standards set by the platform.  
• You manage the different environments of the infrastructure and monitor continuously their capacity for taking proactive measures and ensuring their future growth. 
• You ensure the reliability, performance and security of the infrastructure by defining operational standards, monitoring systems and incident response processes. 
• You automate infrastructure provisioning and lifecycle management using Infrastructure as Code and configuration management tools. 
• You collaborate closely with the platform vendor, ML engineers and data scientists to ensure the infrastructure supports demanding AI workloads and distributed computing requirements. 
• You continuously evaluate and introduce new infrastructure technologies, architectures and best practices to improve efficiency, scalability and resilience. 
• You act as a technical authority and mentor for the infrastructure and platform engineering teams. 

Your Skills 

• Graduate degree in Computer Science, Informatics, Electrical Engineering or a related field. 
• Hands-on engineering mindset with a strong passion for designing, building and operating data center infrastructure. 
• 8+ years of experience designing and operating complex infrastructure systems, preferably in high-performance or distributed environments. 
• Deep expertise in networking, including routing, switching, VLAN/VXLAN, firewalls, load balancing and software-defined networking. 
• Strong experience with virtualization technologies such as VMware or similar hypervisor platforms. 
• Extensive experience designing and operating Kubernetes clusters for large-scale distributed workloads. 
• Strong knowledge of Linux operating systems and system internals. 
• Solid understanding of server hardware architecture, including CPU, memory, storage and networking configurations. 
• Experience with storage systems such as distributed storage, SAN/NAS, and software-defined storage. 
• Strong experience with relational and NoSQL databases but also modern object stores.  
• Proven experience with automation and Infrastructure as Code, preferably using Terraform, Ansible or similar tools. 
• Experience with observability, monitoring and performance tuning of infrastructure systems. 
• Experience with DevOps best practices and the implementation of CI/CD pipelines. 
• Strong understanding of high availability, fault tolerance and disaster recovery strategies. 

Your Competencies 

• You have good analytical skills and you can split a complex problem down to its individual parts. 
• You excel in collaborative environments, working effectively alongside highly skilled engineers and scientists, while confidently taking ownership and making bold, well‑reasoned decisions when technical challenges arise.
• You implement new ideas independently and show perseverance when it comes to defending agreed concepts. 
• Your communication skills allow you to conduct knowledge transfer of complicated technical topics in an easy manner to other audiences.  
• You bring perseverance and constructive assertiveness. 

We Offer

• Competitive remuneration package 
• Continuous learning & development opportunities
• Participation in cultural and team-building activities
• Exposure to a growing environment with cutting-edge technologies
• Corporate wellness initiatives