Senior LLM & GPU Infrastructure Engineer - Toptal in Columbus
Career & Market Insight
Career Signal: High-Demand Niche Skills This role sits at the intersection of two rapidly growing domains — LLM infrastructure and air-gapped/secure deployments — making it a strong career differentiator. Engineers with hands-on GPU cluster management and LLM deployment experience are commanding significant premiums in 2024–2025.
Compensation Benchmark: No salary is listed, but Toptal senior engineers typically earn $80–$150/hour contract rates depending on location and specialization. For a full-time equivalent, this aligns to $150,000–$220,000+ USD annually at market rates for senior AI infrastructure roles — though actual Toptal rates vary widely.
Skills You'll Develop:
- Air-gapped and secure environment deployment — rare, highly valued in defense, finance, and government sectors.
- LLM-on-GPU infrastructure — one of the hottest skills in AI Ops / ML Engineering.
- Grafana/Prometheus observability at scale — broadly transferable to any cloud-native stack.
Green Flags: Long-term, full-time engagement via Toptal signals stability. Working on real enterprise-scale AI deployments in the Middle East is a strong portfolio builder.
Red Flags to Consider: No salary transparency, and the Toptal contractor model means no traditional employment benefits. Onsite travel to Saudi Arabia may present lifestyle or personal considerations for some candidates. The role appears narrowly scoped — confirm there is room for broader impact and growth.
Summary
We are seeking an Infrastructure Engineer for Air-gapped LLM Deployments to support secure, large-scale software deployments in GPU-based environments. The role focuses on deploying LLM workloads in air-gapped settings and establishing observability with Grafana and Prometheus, with onsite presence in Riyadh required a few times per quarter.
General Information
This is a senior-level role requiring ownership of complex deployments across isolated or air-gapped environments. You will work with GPU infrastructure for LLM workloads, ensuring systems can be deployed, monitored, and maintained reliably at scale. The engineer should be comfortable troubleshooting infrastructure and deployment issues, automating deployment processes, and working with observability platforms such as Grafana and Prometheus.
Location: Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Onsite Requirement: A few times per quarter in Riyadh
Tasks and Deliverables
- Design and support air-gapped deployment environments for LLM-based systems.
- Deploy and optimize LLM workloads on GPU infrastructure.
- Support large-scale software deployments across secure environments.
- Implement and maintain observability using Grafana and Prometheus.
- Collaborate onsite in Riyadh to assess, deploy, and troubleshoot environment-specific issues.
Required Experience
- Expertise in air-gapped deployments.
- Experience with large-scale software deployments.
- Experience deploying LLMs on GPUs.
- Hands-on experience with Grafana and Prometheus.
Engagement Highlights
- Senior-level infrastructure/deployment engineering role.
- Work on large-scale GPU and LLM infrastructure.
- Challenging deployment scenarios involving air-gapped environments.
- Full-time, long-term position.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this role fully remote or does it require being in Riyadh full-time?
What is the employment type — contract or full-time employment?
What is the salary or hourly rate for this role?
What specific LLM or GPU technologies are required for this role?
Why is the role restricted to EMEA candidates only?
