Infrastructure Support Engineer

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 world's 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

We're looking for a motivated Infrastructure Support Engineer. You'll 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. You'll gain hands-on experience across declarative infrastructure, zero-trust networking, hybrid cloud/on-prem Kubernetes, and custom tooling—while 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 (you'll 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
• Experience using AI-assisted development workflows (e.g., Claude Code, Codex, or similar AI tools)

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
• Experience with FPGA development

What We're Looking For

We're seeking someone who is excited by variety — you'll 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