Full-Time

Senior Software Engineer

Time Synchronization

Clockwork Systems

Clockwork Systems

1-10 employees

Advanced clock synchronization for distributed systems

Compensation Overview

$150k - $230k/yr

+ Equity

Palo Alto, CA, USA

In Person

Category
Software Engineering (2)
,
Required Skills
Computer Networking
Go
Observability
C/C++
Linux/Unix

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Requirements
  • 6+ years of experience in systems or distributed systems engineering
  • Strong proficiency in C++ and Go
  • Deep understanding of distributed systems concepts (consensus, replication, fault tolerance)
  • Experience with time synchronization protocols (NTP, PTP) or related domains
  • Familiarity with Linux systems programming and networking stacks
  • Experience debugging low-level performance and correctness issues
  • Strong problem-solving and design skills
Responsibilities
  • Design and implement core time synchronization algorithms and services
  • Improve accuracy, drift correction, and fault tolerance of distributed clocks
  • Build globally scalable services that operate under tight latency and consistency constraints
  • Develop observability systems for clock health, skew detection, and anomaly analysis
  • Optimize performance at the OS, kernel, and network levels where necessary
  • Collaborate with infrastructure, platform, and product teams
  • Lead technical direction and mentor engineers
Desired Qualifications
  • Experience with kernel development or eBPF
  • Background in real-time systems or high-frequency trading infrastructure
  • Knowledge of hardware clocks, NIC timestamping, or GPS-based timing
  • Experience operating large-scale distributed systems in production

Clockwork Systems provides clock synchronization technology for mission-critical distributed systems, ensuring precise timing across operations. Its solutions run in both cloud and on-premises environments and are delivered through software licensing, subscriptions, and professional services. The company differentiates itself with deep timing expertise and end-to-end timing across networks, framed by tools like Latency Sensei for cloud latency monitoring. Its goal is to help customers achieve reliable, accurate synchronization to boost performance and reduce timing-related issues in time-sensitive applications.

Company Size

1-10

Company Stage

Early VC

Total Funding

$41.6M

Headquarters

Palo Alto, California

Founded

2018

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Simplify Jobs

Simplify's Take

What believers are saying

  • Clockwork raised $20.6M in September 2025, extending runway for product expansion.
  • Oracle Cloud marketplace availability and AWS private beta broaden distribution beyond early adopters.
  • Customer proof from Uber, eBay, Wells Fargo, and RBC supports enterprise credibility.

What critics are saying

  • NVIDIA, hyperscalers, and networking vendors can bundle adjacent observability and resilience features by 2027.
  • Enterprise buyers will scrutinize YOCO credits after any migration shortfall, pressuring renewals.
  • If FleetIQ and TorchPass fail to create durable demand, Clockwork remains a niche timing vendor.

What makes Clockwork Systems unique

  • Clockwork sells software-only timing and fault-tolerance across cloud, on-prem, and hybrid clusters.
  • Its 2025-2026 stack combines Latency Sensei, Cloud Deluxe, FleetIQ, and TorchPass.
  • YOCO contracts promise 90% failure recovery with no lost training progress or recompute.

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Benefits

Competitive Salary

Company News

Associated Press
Mar 11th, 2026
Clockwork.io launches TorchPass to eliminate GPU failure waste in AI training, saving $6M per 2,048-GPU cluster

Clockwork.io has launched TorchPass Workload Fault Tolerance, a software solution that eliminates costly GPU training failures through Live GPU Migration technology. The system allows AI training workloads to continue running through hardware failures, network disruptions and node crashes without requiring checkpoint restarts. The company claims TorchPass can save over $6 million annually in a typical 2,048-GPU deployment by reducing wasted training progress by 95%. In large clusters, it cuts lost time from approximately three hours per day to under ten minutes. Independent testing by SemiAnalysis found TorchPass delivered faster fault-tolerant performance than standard checkpoint-restart approaches and higher Model FLOPs Utilisation than leading open-source alternatives. The solution typically completes recovery in approximately three minutes whilst training continues uninterrupted. TorchPass is now available as part of Clockwork.io's FleetIQ platform.

The SaaS News
Sep 11th, 2025
Clockwork Raises $20.57 Million in Funding | The SaaS News

Clockwork Raises $20.57 Million in Funding

TechStartups
Sep 10th, 2025
Clockwork Systems Raises $20.6M for FleetIQ

Stanford spinout Clockwork has raised $20.6 million, led by NEA with participation from notable investors, to address AI's GPU inefficiency. The funding coincides with the launch of FleetIQ, a software solution aimed at enhancing GPU performance by improving communication between GPUs, clusters, and clouds. This innovation seeks to reduce crashes, shorten restarts, and increase utilization rates, making AI infrastructure more efficient and sustainable.