Network & Hardware Technician

Neural Rack AI is a high-growth AI infrastructure company delivering bare-metal GPU rentals and private cloud solutions to AI inference platforms, data scientists, and ML researchers globally. Operating high-density GPU clusters across premier data centers in North Carolina and Florida—powered by cutting-edge NVIDIA Blackwell and RTX Pro 6000 hardware—we are building the foundational infrastructure for the next generation of AI workloads.

We are seeking a skilled Network & Hardware Technician based in the Raleigh/Durham area to join our engineering team. In this role, you will be critical to building, scaling, and maintaining our rapidly growing fleet of high-performance AI infrastructure, ensuring maximum uptime and reliability for our customers’ workloads.

• Location: Raleigh / Durham, NC (Onsite presence required for certain tasks and up to 40% remote flexibility for administrative tasks). There is also the possibility of relocation to another site.
• Employment Type: Contract-to-Hire (Initial 3 month contract with explicit intent to convert to full-time W2 status based on performance).
• Compensation: Competitive; commensurate with hands‑on experience.
• Work Schedule: up to 40 hours/week and 5 days/week, plus 24/7 on-call for critical infrastructure incidents.
• Work authorization: This role is not eligible for visa sponsorship. Candidates must have independent, unrestricted U.S. work authorization.

• Network Operations: Manage network design, configuration, routine maintenance, troubleshooting and router/switch hardware deployment across multiple data center sites.
• Systems Administration: Provide remote Linux system administration, including OS installation, disk imaging, benchmarking and hardware troubleshooting.
• Hands‑on Hardware Management: Perform in‑person server and workstation installations, component upgrades, structured cabling, diagnostics, and repairs.
• Monitoring & Reliability: Develop, optimize, and maintain network, server, and power monitoring systems to improve automated alerting and infrastructure reliability.
• Business Continuity: Maintain and test incident response plans, disaster recovery protocols, and secure data backup systems.
• Infrastructure Security: Implement IT security best practices, including firewall management, VPN administration, access controls, and regular firmware/OS patching.

• Procurement & Logistics: Assist with IT procurement, vendor management, and fulfillment of site‑to‑site hardware shipments.
• Lifecycle Management: Manage the secure decommissioning and liquidation of retired hardware assets via specialized secondary markets (e.g., corporate eBay liquidation).

• Overall
  
  Experience:
  
  2–5 years of hands‑on experience in network administration, IT support, data center operations, or a related field.
• Network Expertise: Intermediate‑to‑advanced proficiency in Cisco, Juniper, Arista, Mellanox, Mikrotik or other enterprise network equipment.
• Hardware Expertise: Intermediate‑to‑advanced proficiency in troubleshooting and repairing enterprise servers, high‑end workstations, or enthusiast‑grade PC hardware.
• Availability: Ability to be on 24/7 on‑call to resolve major infrastructure or network outages.
• Logistics: Valid driver’s license and the ability to travel locally/domestically to data center sites as required.
• Education: Formal degrees (Bachelor’s/Associate’s) or industry certifications (CompTIA Network+, A+, CCNA) are highly valued, but not required if balanced by strong, demonstrated hands‑on technical experience.

• Intermediate‑to‑advanced Linux OS proficiency
• Cybersecurity certifications or experience
• Experience operating as a third‑party host or provider on GPU rental marketplaces (e.g., Vast.ai, Runpod, Tensordock, Quickpod).
• Background in professional cryptocurrency mining or blockchain infrastructure operations (e.g., Ethereum, Flux, Bittensor).
• Familiarity with containerization, cluster orchestration and storage frameworks (Docker, Kubernetes, Ray, TrueNAS/NFS, Ceph, etc.).
• Basic software scripting or rapid prototyping experience (including AI‑assisted development).