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Senior Distributed Systems Engineer Jobs in California

IonQ

Senior Distributed Systems Engineer

Santa Clara, CA · On-site

$122K - $167K/yr

We are looking for a deeply hands-on Senior Distributed Systems Engineer to join the team building IonQ's Network and Security Platform. You will own the backend services - ingestion pipelines ...

IonQ

Senior Distributed Systems Engineer

Santa Clara, CA · On-site

$122K - $167K/yr

We are looking for a deeply hands-on Senior Distributed Systems Engineer to join the team building IonQ's Network and Security Platform. You will own the backend services - ingestion pipelines ...

Archil

Sr. Distributed Systems Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$123K - $168K/yr

As a distributed systems engineer, you'll work across the stack to solve problems and help build Archil volumes, with significant influence over the technical and product direction. Responsibilities ...

Archil

Sr. Distributed Systems Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

$123K - $168K/yr

Role As a distributed systems engineer, you'll work across the stack to solve problems as they come up and help build Archil volumes. You'll have significant influence over the technical and product ...

Archil

Distributed Systems Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

As a Distributed Systems Engineer, you will work across the stack to solve problems, build capabilities in a storage service, and design interactions in distributed systems. Responsibilities : • Be ...

IonQ

Senior Staff Distributed Systems Engineer

Santa Clara, CA · On-site

$122K - $167K/yr

We are looking for a deeply hands-on Senior Staff Distributed Systems Engineer to join the team building IonQ's Network and Security Platform. You will own the backend services - ingestion pipelines ...

Sieve

Distributed Systems Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

The role involves designing and engineering systems for complex ML and ETL pipelines to ensure ... hyper-fast distributed systems at the scale of thousands of GPUs • building great internal ...

Archil

Distributed Systems Engineer

San Francisco, CA · On-site

Role As a distributed systems engineer, you'll work across the stack to solve problems as they come up and help build Archil volumes. You'll have significant influence over the technical and product ...

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Senior Distributed Systems Engineer information

See California salary details

$55.3K

$123.1K

$173.7K

How much do senior distributed systems engineer jobs pay per year?

As of Aug 22, 2026, the average yearly pay for senior distributed systems engineer in California is $123,099.00, according to ZipRecruiter salary data. Most workers in this role earn between $103,100.00 and $141,100.00 per year, depending on experience, location, and employer.

What is a senior distributed systems engineer?

Senior Distributed Systems Engineers are experienced professionals who design, build, and maintain large-scale computing systems that run across multiple machines or locations. They focus on ensuring reliability, scalability, and performance of distributed applications, often dealing with challenges like data consistency, fault tolerance, and network latency. These engineers typically have deep expertise in distributed computing principles, programming languages, and cloud infrastructure. They also mentor junior team members and help architect robust solutions for complex technical problems.

What are the key skills and qualifications needed to thrive as a senior distributed systems engineer?

A Senior Distributed Systems Engineer requires deep expertise in computer science fundamentals, scalable system architecture, and proficiency in programming languages such as Java, Go, or Python, often supported by a relevant degree and significant experience in distributed systems. Familiarity with tools like Kubernetes, Docker, Kafka, and cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure) is typically expected, along with knowledge of monitoring and CI/CD pipelines. Strong problem-solving, communication, and leadership skills help in tackling complex engineering challenges and collaborating across teams. These skills are crucial for designing robust, scalable, and reliable systems that support organizational growth and high availability.

What are some common challenges senior distributed systems engineers face when designing scalable systems?

Senior Distributed Systems Engineers often encounter challenges such as managing data consistency, ensuring fault tolerance, and minimizing latency across multiple nodes. Balancing trade-offs between availability and partition tolerance (as outlined by the CAP theorem) is a frequent consideration. Additionally, coordinating between development and operations teams to maintain system reliability and efficiently resolve issues that arise in production environments is crucial. Strong communication skills and a deep understanding of distributed architectures help address these complexities effectively.

What is the difference between Senior Distributed Systems Engineer vs Cloud Solutions Architect?

AspectSenior Distributed Systems EngineerCloud Solutions Architect
CredentialsBachelor's/Master's in CS or related, experience with distributed systemsBachelor's/Master's in CS, IT, or related, cloud certifications (AWS, Azure)
Work EnvironmentDesigning, developing, and maintaining distributed systems in tech companiesDesigning cloud infrastructure solutions for clients or internal teams
Industry UsageTech, finance, e-commerce, and enterprise sectorsIT consulting, cloud service providers, enterprise IT departments

The Senior Distributed Systems Engineer focuses on building and optimizing distributed computing systems, while the Cloud Solutions Architect designs cloud infrastructure solutions. Both roles require technical expertise and often overlap in cloud environments, but their primary responsibilities differ in scope and focus.

What are the most commonly searched types of Distributed Systems Engineer jobs in California?

The most popular types of Distributed Systems Engineer jobs in California are:

What are popular job titles related to Senior Distributed Systems Engineer jobs in California?

For Senior Distributed Systems Engineer jobs in California, the most frequently searched job titles are:

What job categories do people searching Senior Distributed Systems Engineer jobs in California look for?

The top searched job categories for Senior Distributed Systems Engineer jobs in California are:

What cities in California are hiring for Senior Distributed Systems Engineer jobs?

Cities in California with the most Senior Distributed Systems Engineer job openings:

Senior Distributed Systems Engineer jobs near you
Infographic showing various Senior Distributed Systems Engineer job openings in California as of August 2026, with employment types broken down into 1% As Needed, 88% Full Time, 7% Part Time, 3% Contract, and 1% Nights. Highlights an 88% Physical, 3% Hybrid, and 9% Remote job distribution, with an average salary of $123,099 per year, or $59.2 per hour.

Senior Distributed Systems Engineer

MBZUAI (Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence)

Sunnyvale, CA • On-site

$122K - $166K/yr

Full-time

Re-posted yesterday

Job description

Job Summary:
MBZUAI (Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence) is focused on designing and operating ultra-scale GPU supercomputing systems for training foundation models. The Senior Distributed Systems Engineer will optimize communication stacks for large-scale distributed training, ensuring performance and reliability across GPU workloads.
Responsibilities:
• Design and optimize expert-parallel and hybrid-parallel communication patterns
• Drive high-performance hierarchical collectives for MoE workloads
• Co-design runtime orchestration with communication topology awareness
• Reduce tail latency and improve determinism across thousands of GPUs
• Architect fault-tolerant distributed execution under real-world cluster failures
• Communication-compute overlap and topology-aware collective optimization
• Deep debugging of NCCL, RDMA, and custom communication layers
• Hybrid expert parallel strategies in modern large-scale MoE systems
• Elastic and resilient distributed job orchestration concepts
• Congestion analysis and routing optimization across InfiniBand/RoCE fabrics
• Microbenchmarking and performance modeling for communication-heavy workloads
• Hybrid expert parallel communication for Mixture-of-Experts training
• Scaling behavior under network pressure
• Distributed orchestration for elastic, large-scale training
• Fault detection and recovery in distributed GPU workloads
• Cross-layer bottlenecks: GPU ↔ NIC ↔ PCIe ↔ NVSwitch ↔ Fabric ↔ Scheduler
Qualifications:
Required:
• Experience optimizing distributed training at 1,000+ GPU scale (or equivalent depth)
• Hands-on expertise with RDMA, InfiniBand, RoCE, and GPUDirect RDMA
• Deep familiarity with NCCL and/or UCX internals
• Strong systems programming ability (C/C++, Rust, or Go)
• Strong familiarity with modern model training frameworks such as PyTorch
• Ability to troubleshoot and profile training performance issues related to communication bottlenecks
• Ability to translate research ideas into production-grade optimizations
• Experience debugging distributed hangs, desynchronization, and performance regressions
• Include a link to your GitHub (required)
• Provide links to relevant distributed systems, HPC, or large-scale training projects
• Include a list of publications and/or public technical reports (if applicable)
• Describe the hardest distributed debugging problem you solved
• Include measurable performance improvements you have delivered
• Master’s, or Bachelor’s + 1 year of relevant experience.
Company:
Official account of Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence. Dedicated to research, innovation, and empowering brilliant minds in AI. Founded in 2019, the company is headquartered in Abu Dhabi, ARE, with a team of 51-200 employees. The company is currently Growth Stage.

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