Member of Technical Staff, TPU Performance Engineering

INFERACT SINGAPORE PTE. LTD.; Singapore; On-site; SGD 167,000 - 335,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical coverage

Dental coverage

Vision coverage

Equity

Job summary

Inferact Singapore is seeking a TPU performance engineer to advance vLLM as a premier inference engine on Google TPUs. You will develop and optimize TPU backends, compiler integrations, runtime paths, and benchmarking infrastructure using JAX, XLA, Pallas, and related tooling to achieve frontier inference performance on TPU hardware.

You will work at the boundary of inference systems, kernels, compilers, and hardware architecture, delivering production-ready model serving with clear correctness,

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in CS, engineering, systems, ML, or similar.
• Hands-on experience building or optimizing TPU workloads with JAX, XLA, Pallas, or related tooling.
• Deep understanding of TPU execution, memory behavior, and performance constraints for ML workloads.

Responsibilities

• Build and optimize TPU backends and related runtime paths.
• Develop benchmarking infrastructure and profiling workflows for TPU workloads.
• Improve production-relevant model serving on TPU with correctness, latency, and throughput targets.

Skills

JAX/XLA/Pallas tooling

TPU performance tuning

Kernel optimization

Performance benchmarking

ML inference systems

Profiling tools

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Job description

Inferact's mission is to grow vLLM as the world's AI inference engine and accelerate AI progress by making inference cheaper and faster. Founded by the creators and core maintainers of vLLM, we sit at the intersection of models and hardware, a position that took years to build.

About the Role

We're looking for a TPU performance engineer to make vLLM a first-class inference engine on Google TPUs. You'll build and optimize TPU backends, compiler integrations, runtime paths, and benchmarking infrastructure using JAX, XLA, Pallas, and related tooling so vLLM can deliver frontier inference performance on TPU hardware.

You'll work at the boundary of inference systems, kernels, compilers, and hardware architecture, improving production-relevant model serving on TPU with clear correctness, latency, and throughput benchmarks. Your work will help make TPU support in vLLM usable, fast, benchmarked, and maintainable.

Skills and Qualifications

Minimum qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in computer science, engineering, systems, machine learning, or similar.
• Hands-on experience building or optimizing TPU workloads using JAX, XLA, Pallas, or related compiler and runtime tooling.
• Deep understanding of TPU execution, memory behavior, compilation, and performance constraints for ML workloads.
• Experience optimizing ML kernels or inference paths such as attention, GEMM, sampling, KV cache, fused kernels, or backend runtime paths.
• Strong performance profiling and benchmarking skills, with the ability to use measurements, compiler artifacts, correctness tests, and reproducible benchmarks to guide optimization work.

Preferred qualifications:

• Experience with vLLM, SGLang, TensorRT-LLM, XLA-based serving, or other LLM inference systems.
• Familiarity with batching, KV cache, decoding, serving tradeoffs, and backend performance constraints in production inference systems.
• Experience with compiler technologies such as XLA, MLIR, LLVM, Pallas, or other kernel DSLs, including lowering, fusion, and backend code generation.
• Knowledge of quantization methods such as INT8, FP8, mixed precision, or TPU-specific numeric formats, including accuracy and performance tradeoffs.

Bonus points if you have:

• Contributed to vLLM, JAX/XLA, Pallas, PyTorch/XLA, compiler projects, or other open-source ML infrastructure.
• Built TPU benchmarking infrastructure or automated performance regression detection for accelerator workloads.
• Worked directly with Google TPU ecosystem stakeholders, accelerator platform teams, or early-access programs to ship backend, compiler, or inference performance improvements.

Logistics

Fresh graduates are welcome to apply. Minimum years of work experience: 0.

Compensation: Monthly salary of S$15,000 to S$30,000, depending on background, skills, and experience, plus equity.

Benefits: Inferact offers a generous benefits package, including medical, dental, and vision coverage.