AI Platform / AIOps Engineer

Are you ready to build and operate the backbone of the Dutch AI Factory, where high performance computing, cloud-native technologies and AI come together? At SURF, you will play a key role in designing and scaling a next-generation AI platform that powers cutting-edge research and innovation across the Netherlands. Does building the infrastructure behind Europe’s AI ambitions sound like your kind of challenge? Apply now.

Where you will work

SURF is the ICT cooperative for Dutch educational and research institutions. Together with them, we work on digital services and complex innovation challenges to enhance the quality of education and research.

Working at SURF means being part of a unique and open organization. You can see this in everything: the organizational structure, the composition of the project teams, the culture in our offices, and the atmosphere among colleagues. SURF offers excellent employment conditions and takes a flexible approach to work–life balance. Employees enjoy working independently, and everyone is given the space and freedom to apply and develop their talents as effectively and broadly as possible.

The team you will join

You will join the AI Systems team within the Advanced Solutions for Research unit. Your colleagues work on training language models such as OpenEuroLLM and GPT-NL, and advise researchers on the optimal use of the Snellius supercomputer for AI workloads.

You will work with Python on a rapidly growing AI platform. The team has an open and collaborative culture, with a strong focus on knowledge sharing and mutual support.

What you will do

As an AI Platform / AIOps Engineer at SURF, you build and operate the services and orchestration layer of the Dutch AI Factory. You work on integrating Slurm and Kubernetes, implement MLOps tooling and model-serving infrastructure, and ensure that researchers, companies and government organisations can run AI workloads reliably and at scale. You operate at the intersection of high-performance computing, cloud-native technologies and AI infrastructure.

Your responsibilities include:

• Designing and implementing sandbox environments on containerised HPC/Kubernetes infrastructure
• Building the Slurm ↔ Kubernetes integration, including IAM, accounting/quotas, logging, monitoring and user-facing interfaces.
• Deploying and operating MLOps and runtime services, such as experiment tracking, CI/CD pipelines and model serving (Triton, vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, ONNX Runtime)
• Developing portability tooling to move workflows across AI Factory environments, institutional systems and cloud platforms
• Implementing LLM/GPAI sandboxes with safety filters, logging, rate limiting and monitoring
• Implementing energy-aware scheduling and sustainability dashboards
• Supporting EuroHPC federation and interoperability with other AI Factories
• Providing co-creation and access infrastructure (e.g. Jupyter, VS Code, project spaces)

Your skills and experience

You are an experienced engineer with a strong technical foundation and a clear focus on scalable, future-proof solutions. You bring structure to complexity, communicate clearly, and operate confidently in high-performance, distributed infrastructure environments.

We are looking for a new colleague with

• BSc/MSc level in computer science, software engineering or equivalent
• Strong experience with Kubernetes (operators, Helm, namespaces, RBAC, networking)
• Experience with container technologies (Docker/Podman, container registries, CI/CD)
• Knowledge of or experience with HPC schedulers (Slurm) and Linux system administration
• Experience with monitoring and observability (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/Loki)
• An infrastructure-as-code mindset (Terraform, Ansible, SaltStack, GitOps)
• Good command of Python and/or Go; Bash scripting
• Strong command of English; Dutch is a plus

Strong advantages

• Experience with GPU scheduling and NVIDIA tooling (CUDA, MIG, MPS, GPU Operator)
• Knowledge of model-serving frameworks (Triton, vLLM, TGI, Ray Serve)
• Experience with MLOps platforms (MLflow, Kubeflow, Weights & Biases)
• Knowledge of identity federation (SRAM, eduGAIN, OIDC, LDAP)
• Experience with high-performance storage (parallel file systems, S3/object storage)
• Open-source contributions

Additional information

For this role, candidates must already have the legal right to work in the Netherlands.

Unfortunately, we are not able to offer visa sponsorship for this position.

A background screening may be part of the recruitment process.

SURF takes pleasure in doing its recruitment itself; acquisition is therefore not appreciated.