AI Infra Research Scientist - Global Frontier Tech Program

ByteDance; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 212,800 - 387,600; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) savings plan with company match

Paid parental leave

10 paid holidays per year

17 days of Paid Personal Time

Job summary

ByteDance is seeking a Research Scientist for its AI Infrastructure team in San Jose, California. This role involves developing technologies to enhance AI systems and collaborating with academic institutions. Candidates should possess a PhD in a relevant field with experience in software development and AI. The attractive salary range is $212,800 - $387,600 annually, along with comprehensive benefits including health insurance and paid time off.

Qualifications

• Completing or recently completed a PhD in a relevant technical discipline.
• Commit to proactive continuous learning and enthusiasm for AI technologies.
• Good communication and teamwork skills.

Responsibilities

• Develop key technologies to optimize AI Infra stack.
• Work with academia on joint development.
• Conduct deep-dive analysis on the latest technologies.

Skills

Experience with LLM training infra

Experience with AI agents

Strong communication skills

Teamwork skills

Education

PhD in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Artificial Intelligence

Job description

Research Scientist - Compute AI Infra - Global Frontier Tech Recruitment Program - 2027 Start (PhD)

Location:

San Jose

Team:

Infrastructure

Employment Type:

Regular

Job Code:

A45808

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Responsibilities

We are looking for talented individuals to join our team in 2027. As a graduate, you will get opportunities to pursue bold ideas, tackle complex challenges, and unlock limitless growth. Launch your career where inspiration is infinite at our company.Successful candidates must be able to commit to an onboarding date by end of year 2027. Please state your availability and graduation date clearly in your resume.Team IntroductionThe infra-compute division focuses on building large-scale, highly available Cloud and AI infrastructure. Our work powers both ByteDance’s public cloud offerings and its internal corporate products. The US team is dedicated to the research and development of cutting-edge technologies, including training, inference, and AI Agent infrastructure.Responsibilities- Develop key technologies to optimize our AI Infra stack, including training infra, inference infra, and AI agents.- Work with academia and open source communities on joint development.- Follow and research the latest technologies from academia or industry and conduct deep-dive analysis.- Present our research and products in academic papers.Topic Content:With the large-scale adoption of LLMs and AI agents, traditional cloud-native infrastructure can no longer meet the ultra-high performance and elasticity requirements of AI workloads. This topic conducts systematic research across the entire AI infrastructure stack:1. Network and Observability: Research intelligent fault localization and root cause analysis for large-scale AI clusters, combined with intelligent tuning of time-series databases to improve cluster stability.2. Storage Systems: Develop serverless high-performance elastic file systems and storage acceleration architectures specifically for AI scenarios, explore hardware-software co-optimization for DPU, and overcome AI storage performance bottlenecks.3. Data Center Power Scheduling: Research GPU/CPU/MEM heterogeneous collaborative scheduling technologies, build a heterogeneous power orchestration system for AI agents, and address scheduling challenges including heterogenous workloads and state dependencies.4. Vector Retrieval: Optimize core vector retrieval technologies for LLM-powered applications, building a cloud-native distributed vector index engine to meet ultra-large-scale vector retrieval demands with low latency and low cost.5. Intelligence and Agent Architecture: Explore automatic infrastructure optimization based on AI Agent workflows, build a self-evolvable business agent framework, and enable full-stack intelligent optimization through AI for Infra.This topic aims to build a next-generation AI-native infrastructure to support the deployment of LLMs and AI agents, improve resource utilization, reduce costs, support elastic scaling, and drive the technological evolution of AI infrastructure.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications- Individuals who are completing or recently completed a PhD in Software Development, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Artificial Intelligence or a related technical discipline.- Experience with at least one of the following areas:- LLM training infra, including optimizations for various post-training workloads such as RL training, knowledge distillation, etc.- LLM inference infra, including inference engine performance improvements, more efficient execution parallelism, GPU kernel optimizations, etc.- AI Agents and Agent Infra, including coding agents, general-purpose agents, agent memory, agent sandbox, etc.- Commit to proactive continuous learning, demonstrate enthusiasm for AI technologies, and exhibit a strong ability to quickly grasp and apply new technologies.- Good communication and teamwork skills.Preferred Qualifications- Frequent contributors or maintainers in AI Infra related open source communities such as PyTorch, vLLM or SGLang.- Having publications in CS conferences such as OSDI or MLSys.

Job Information

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $218400 - $387600 annually.

Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.

Benefits may vary depending on the nature of employment and the country work location. Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others. Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:

1. Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;

2. Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems; and

3. Exercising sound judgment.

About Us

Founded in 2012, ByteDance's mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. With a suite of more than a dozen products, including TikTok, Lemon8, CapCut and Pico as well as platforms specific to the China market, including Toutiao, Douyin, and Xigua, ByteDance has made it easier and more fun for people to connect with, consume, and create content.

Why Join ByteDance

Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.

As ByteDancers, we strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our Company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.

Diversity & Inclusion

ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.

Reasonable Accommodation

ByteDance is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/RA-request