Network Consultant: HPC, Computing, AI, Artificial Intelligence

Network Consultant: HPC, Computing, AI, Artificial Intelligence

Our enterprise client is looking for a strong Network Architect or Consultant with hands-on understanding of AI/HPC fabrics, low-latency Ethernet and InfiniBand designs, optical and copper connectivity, and the operational realities of deploying high-density GPU infrastructure in enterprise data centres.

Start Date: ASAP
Duration: 100 days
Pay Rate: £645 p/d (PLEASE NOTE: Employer NI is paid for by the client)
Total Daily Earnings: £732 p/d (includes rolled up holiday)
IR35 Status: Inside
Location: London

NOTE: Active SC Clearance is highly desirable.

Responsibilities:

• Develop high-level and low-level designs for NVIDIA-based AI/HPC infrastructure, particularly GB300, B300, DGX, HGX and NVL72-aligned environments.
• Design InfiniBand Back End fabrics, Spectrum-X converged Front End networks and where required, Spectrum-X Ethernet Back End fabrics using NVIDIA reference architectures as the baseline.
• Provide expert technical guidance across RoCEv2, InfiniBand, VXLAN EVPN, leaf-spine architectures, congestion management, rail-optimised design and multi-plane fabrics.
• Act as a technical lead for defined work packages, coordinating with consultants, vendors, pre-sales teams and delivery stakeholders to ensure designs are technically correct and commercially practical.
• Contribute to reusable design patterns, internal knowledge sharing, BoM review checklists and capability development within the consultancy practice.

Essential experience and skills:

• Strong networking background with demonstrable experience in data centre, HPC, AI infrastructure or large-scale low-latency fabric design.
• Excellent knowledge of high-performance AI/HPC networking technologies, including InfiniBand, RoCEv2, Spectrum-X Ethernet, congestion control concepts and lossless Ethernet design principles.
• Strong understanding of VXLAN EVPN, BGP, leaf-spine fabric design, routing design, resiliency models and operational troubleshooting in modern data centre networks.
• Good understanding of physical infrastructure design, including switch placement, row-level design, structured cabling, patching strategy, fibre polarity, cable routing and data centre implementation constraints.
• Practical knowledge of optical and copper connectivity choices, including MMF, SMF, DAC, ACC/AEC, breakout cables, MPO/MTP, LC, QSFP, QSFP112, OSFP and QSFP-DD form factors.

Essential:

• Physical infrastructure
• Rack/row placement, switch placement, cable length planning, patching, cooling impact, power density and layout considerations for high-density AI clusters.
• Strongly preferred
• Liquid cooling
• Awareness of direct liquid cooling, in-row versus in-rack CDU options, operational constraints and how cooling decisions affect rack layout and networking design.

Desirable:

• Storage and management integration
• Understanding of high-speed storage connectivity, management fabrics, OOB networks and how they integrate with AI infrastructure designs.

Typical activities:

• Validate NVIDIA reference architecture choices against customer scale, rack layout, cabling distances, data centre constraints and growth expectations.
• Review proposed switch, optic and cable selections to confirm correct speed, form factor, reach, fibre type, connector type and supported use case.
• Compare design options such as InfiniBand versus Spectrum-X Ethernet Back End, MMF versus SMF, DAC versus optical and centralised versus distributed switch placement.
• Produce clear diagrams, port maps, cable matrices, BoM annotations and design assumptions to support sales, delivery and customer review.
• Engage with NVIDIA and OEM partners to validate emerging design patterns, component availability and product-specific constraints.
• Support handover into delivery, including explanation of design decisions, known constraints, dependencies, risks and operational considerations.

Desirable certifications and background:

• NVIDIA certifications or demonstrable equivalent experience in AI infrastructure, networking or data centre technologies.
• Cisco CCNP/CCIE, NVIDIA Networking, HPE, Aruba, Juniper, Arista or other relevant data centre networking certifications.
• Experience in professional services, consultancy, pre-sales architecture or customer-facing technical design roles.
• Experience with high-performance storage platforms used in AI/HPC environments.
• Familiarity with automation, monitoring, observability or infrastructure-as-code tooling used to deploy and operate data centre fabrics.

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