Infrastructure Support Engineer
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Monthly Salary:
Posted on:
18 hours ago
Vacancies:
1 Vacancy
Job Summary
Infrastructure Support Engineer
Location: Cambridge UK (with hybrid options)
Department: Infrastructure & CI
Employment Type: Full-time
About lowRISC CIC
lowRISC is a not-for-profit engineering organisation dedicated to making open-source silicon a commercial reality. Through collaborative community-driven projects like OpenTitan (the worlds first open-source silicon root of trust) and Ibex (a production-grade RISC-V CPU core) we develop and maintain high-quality verified open IP that powers secure next-generation hardware. Our small expert team combines deep hardware knowledge with modern software and infrastructure practices to accelerate open silicon adoption across industry partners and the RISC-V ecosystem.
Role Overview
Were looking for a motivated Infrastructure Support Engineer. Youll support a compact but unusually broad infrastructure footprint that supports hardware design security verification FPGA-based testing CI/CD for silicon projects and collaborative open-source workflows.
This is a fantastic opportunity for a junior to mid-level engineer who thrives on learning new technologies quickly and enjoys making incremental improvements in a mission-focused setting. Youll gain hands-on experience across declarative infrastructure zero-trust networking hybrid cloud/on-prem Kubernetes and custom toolingwhile contributing directly to the productivity of engineers building foundational open-source silicon.
Key Responsibilities
- Help maintain and troubleshoot our on-prem Kubernetes cluster powering hardware simulation verification and test workloads
- Support our Nebula overlay network as we build toward a robust zero-trust model across distributed engineering teams
- Operate and enhance self-hosted GitHub Actions runners including an FPGA test rig that handles real hardware requests from CI workflows
- Maintain and gradually improve our Python-based internal tooling (used daily by hardware and software engineers) refactoring for maintainability adding features and applying better software practices where it adds value
- Manage NixOS servers through declarative configurations for reproducible reliable deployments
- Provision and manage Google Cloud resources (VMs GKE-based runners storage networking) using Terraform / OpenTofu
- Monitor system health and respond to alerts
- Collaborate with hardware engineers security specialists and open-source contributors to debug issues spanning CI pipelines FPGA rigs cloud environments and internal scripts
- Document setups workflows and lessons learned to help onboard new team members and partners
Required Skills & Experience
- Strong Linux fundamentals and comfort administering production-like systems
- Practical Python experience for scripting automation and maintaining existing codebases (youll read and improve real-world Python tools regularly)
- Hands-on work with Kubernetes (basic operations troubleshooting YAML manifests)
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools like Terraform / OpenTofu (or similar)
- Solid Git/GitHub knowledge ideally with Actions or CI/CD pipelines
- Curiosity and ability to ramp up on new tools and concepts quickly
- Clear communication skills for working across hardware software and infrastructure domains
Highly Desirable
- Any exposure to Nix or NixOS (personal projects welcome)
- Interest in or experience with Rust for performance-sensitive tooling
- Familiarity with Google Cloud (GCE GKE IAM)
- Knowledge of overlay/VPN technologies (Nebula Tailscale WireGuard) or zero-trust principles
- Previous involvement in CI for hardware/FPGA testing or open-source projects
What Were Looking For
Were seeking someone who is excited by variety youll touch many different systems and technologies in a small team gaining broad valuable skills fast. The environment rewards initiative problem-solving and steady progress on both quick fixes and longer-term clean-ups. If you enjoy stretching yourself across open-source silicon tooling hybrid infrastructure and collaborative engineering and you appreciate the satisfaction of making life easier for a team pushing the boundaries of secure hardware this role offers real scope to grow while contributing to high-impact projects.
What We Offer
- Direct involvement in enabling open-source silicon at scale (OpenTitan Ibex and beyond)
- Exposure to an unusually diverse modern stack in a focused mission-driven not-for-profit
- Opportunities to learn from hardware security experts RISC-V specialists and open-source collaborators
- Collaborative low-ego culture with strong emphasis on quality and long-term maintainability
Salary and Benefits:
Salary dependent upon experience
lowRISC offers a generous benefits package including:
- 25 days annual leave plus 8 bank holidays.
- 12.5% employers pension contribution (subject to employee salary sacrifice of 6%).
- 4 weeks paid sabbatical after 4 years service.
- Private Medical Insurance Group Income Protection Insurance Critical Illness Insurance Life Insurance.
- The opportunity to attend appropriate Industry conferences and/or training.
- Central Cambridge Office (near train station)
We are open to discussions about hybrid working after an initial probationary period.
We are an equal opportunities employer and encourage applications from eligible and suitably qualified candidates regardless of age disability ethnicity gender gender reassignment religion or belief sexual orientation marital or civil partnership status or pregnancy and maternity/paternity.
If you need any adjustments made to the application or selection process please let us know by emailing: emailprotected
Required Experience:
Manager
Key Skills
- Active Directory
- VMware
- Cloud
- Windows
- Infrastructure
- Linux
- Troubleshoot
- Desktop
- PC
- Backup
- laptops
- Problem Resolution
- Setup
- hardware
- Technical Support
About Company
lowRISC® is a not-for-profit engineering company that creates and maintains commercial-grade open-source silicon designs.
