EDB-IPP Project: Advancing GPU Optimization for Large Language Models

Rakuten Kobo Inc.; Singapore; On-site; SGD 42,000 - 54,000; Full time

Job summary

Rakuten Asia, in partnership with the Economic Development Board (EDB) through the Industrial Postgraduate Programme (IPP), seeks PhD students to advance AI research and collaborations.

Ideal candidates have deep learning, ML, and NLP expertise with hands-on PyTorch experience. The programme offers full sponsorship and future employment with Rakuten Asia upon completion.

Qualifications

• Proven hands-on deep learning and ML experience.
• Strong NLP knowledge and research mindset.
• Experience training and evaluating PyTorch models.

Responsibilities

• Collaborate with Rakuten Asia and EDB/IPP on research projects.
• Contribute to high-impact publications and open-source tools.
• Develop and train scalable AI models for research use cases.

Skills

Deep learning

Machine learning

Natural language processing

PyTorch

Education

PhD in a relevant field

Tools

PyTorch

CUDA

Job description

Job Description: Rakuten Asia, in partnership with the Economic Development Board (EDB) through the Industrial Postgraduate Programme (IPP), is seeking new PhD students.

We are looking for individuals with a robust understanding of deep learning, machine learning, and natural language processing to contribute to our innovative research projects.

Essential requirements include proven hands-on expertise and strong engineering skillsets, specifically in the development and training of PyTorch models.

IPP Programme Benefits Candidates successfully selected for this programme will receive full sponsorship for their postgraduate studies and will be hired by Rakuten Asia upon successful completion.

Collaboration Model The collaboration will include joint PhD student supervision, shared access to computational resources for large-scale model compression experiments, and regular research exchanges.

Output will include high-impact publications, open-source tools, and demonstrable prototypes of efficient AI.

Project Outline

Rakuten is committed to advancing the frontier of AI infrastructure, with a strong focus on optimizing large-scale GPU clusters for training and serving Large Language Models (LLMs).

As models grow in size and complexity—ranging from dense architectures to mixture-of-experts (MoE)—achieving efficiency across training, inference, and deployment has become increasingly critical.

Our GPU Optimization department combines deep system expertise and significant computational assets, and we are seeking strategic collaborations with leading universities to jointly tackle these challenges.

Proposed Research Areas

• Efficient Scheduling for Sparse & Dense LLMs: Design token-aware, load-balanced scheduling algorithms for MoE and hybrid LLM workloads that reduce inter-GPU communication and optimize heterogeneous cluster utilization.
• Efficient Inference for State Space Models Develop high-throughput, low-latency inference techniques for state space models, leveraging their linear-time properties to outperform traditional attention mechanisms in long-context scenarios.
• Memory-Aware Training & Serving Explore advanced quantization, memory-efficient checkpointing, offloading strategies, and dynamic memory management techniques to support training and inference of ultra-large models.
• Scalable Parallelism for LLMs Investigate hybrid parallelism (data, model, pipeline, expert) and communication-reduction strategies tailored for scaling LLMs across thousands of GPUs.
• Hardware-Aware Optimization Develop compiler, kernel, and data layout optimizations that fully exploit features of modern GPU architectures, improving throughput for both dense and sparse model operations.
• High-Throughput, Low-Latency Inference Create optimized model serving strategies using speculative decoding, continuous batching, expert routing, and adaptive computation for production-grade LLM applications.

Rakuten is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applications regardless of sex, marital status, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, religious belief or age.

Rakuten Asia is the regional headquarters of Rakuten Group Inc, a global leader in internet services and innovation.

Located in the heart of Singapore, Rakuten Asia drives the growth and development of Rakuten’s businesses across the APAC region.

Recognized and certified as a "Great Place to Work" since 2022, Rakuten Asia is committed to empowering individuals, communities and businesses through cutting-edge technology, data-driven solutions, and a culture of collaboration.

From e-commerce, fintech, sports, and even entertainment, our work is diverse, exciting, and impactful.

We believe in empowering our people to grow, innovate, and make a difference.

If you’re looking for a workplace where your talent is valued, where your contributions matter, and where you can play a part in shaping the future of technology and society, Rakuten Asia is the place for you.

Join us and take the next step in your career with Rakuten Asia!