AI/ML Training Performance Engineer

Socket.dev; Salt Lake City (UT); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

Blackrock Neurotech is seeking an ML Training Performance Engineer to own and optimize the efficiency and scalability of model training on GPU and cloud infra in Salt Lake City. You will work across the training stack with researchers and data/infra teams to drive end-to-end performance gains, maintaining numerical correctness.

You will profile, optimize, and validate training workloads, develop kernels, and tune distributed strategies to fit larger models within available resources.

Qualifications

• Proven performance improvements for large DL training workloads.
• Experience with profiling and benchmarking to validate end-to-end gains.
• Strong Python and C++ programming and debugging skills.
• Bachelor-level degree or equivalent practical experience.

Responsibilities

• Own training performance across single/multi-GPU and multi-node workloads.
• Profile full training paths to identify bottlenecks and quantify impact.
• Tune tensor layouts, memory, precision, and activation checkpointing.
• Develop and validate custom GPU kernels with CUDA, Triton, or HIP/ROCm.
• Improve training scripts, batching, and optimizer execution without changing behavior.
• Design distributed training strategies based on model structure and interconnects.
• Collaborate with researchers on hardware-aware changes and convergence.
• Coordinate data delivery with prefetching and I/O overlap.
• Work with IT on GPU selection, cloud configs, and capacity planning.

Skills

Python

C++

GPU understanding

CUDA

PyTorch

Distributed training

Profiling & benchmarking

Performance optimization

System debugging

Tensor concepts

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/CE/EE or related field

Tools

CUDA

HIP/ROCm

Triton

Job description

The Role

The ML Training Performance Engineer will own the efficiency and scalability of training models on GPU and cloud infrastructure. You will turn available compute into faster, more capable experiments as our model training scales in complexity and compute requirements.

As a hands–on individual contributor on a small research team, you will work across the training stack, from Python and model execution to GPU kernels, distributed communication, and runtime environments. Partnering with model researchers, data engineers, and infrastructure and IT teams, you will identify and implement performance improvements while preserving numerical correctness and scientific intent.

You will have significant ownership over how we measure, optimize, and scale training performance, establishing the baselines, tooling, and technical approaches that will support our AI/ML work as it grows.

What You'll Do

• Own training performance across single-GPU, multi-GPU, and multi-node workloads, establishing reproducible baselines for throughput, memory use, utilization, time to target quality, and cost
• Profile the full training path to distinguish compute, memory, communication, CPU, and I/O bottlenecks and prioritize changes with measurable end-to-end impact
• Optimize tensor layouts, precision, memory allocation, activation checkpointing, operator fusion, and execution graphs to fit larger or longer-context models within available resources
• Write, tune, and validate custom GPU kernels using CUDA, Triton, HIP/ROCm, or the appropriate platform tools when existing implementations limit performance
• Improve Python training scripts, framework and compiler settings, batching, gradient accumulation, and optimizer execution while preserving intended training behavior
• Design and tune distributed training strategies, including data, tensor, pipeline, or sharded parallelism, based on model structure, memory limits, and interconnect topology
• Partner with model researchers on hardware‑aware architecture and hyperparameter changes, measuring their effects on convergence, model quality, and compute requirements
• Coordinate with the neural data infrastructure engineer on prefetching, pinned memory, host-to-device transfer, and I/O overlap so data delivery keeps pace with training
• Work with infrastructure and IT on GPU selection, cloud instance configurations, networking, drivers, containers, scheduling, and capacity planning as training needs and compute capacity scale
• Build robust checkpoint, restart, and recovery workflows and performance regression checks that keep long‑running experiments reproducible and productive
• Communicate benchmark evidence, numerical tradeoffs, scaling limits, and resource recommendations clearly to researchers and organizational stakeholders

What You Bring

• Demonstrated experience improving the performance of substantial deep learning training workloads, with measured gains in speed, memory efficiency, or compute cost
• A measurement‑driven approach to performance optimization, using profiling and benchmarking to validate meaningful end‑to‑end improvements
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field, or equivalent practical experience
• Exceptional programming ability in Python and C++ or a comparable systems language, with strong debugging, testing, and performance analysis practices
• Deep understanding of GPU execution, including memory hierarchies, memory coalescing, thread blocks, warps or wavefronts, occupancy, synchronization, and bandwidth limits
• Hands‑on experience developing and profiling GPU kernels with CUDA or HIP/ROCm, and the ability to diagnose correctness and performance at the hardware level
• Deep knowledge of PyTorch or an equivalent framework, including automatic differentiation, computation graphs, tensor storage, compilation, and mixed‑precision training
• Strong understanding of deep learning architectures and the underlying computations that drive training performance
• Experience with distributed training, collective communication, sharding, and the interaction between model partitioning and GPU interconnects
• Strong understanding of numerical stability and the ability to validate gradients, convergence, and model quality after performance changes
• Experience configuring and diagnosing Linux‑based GPU environments, containers, cloud compute, and high‑throughput storage or networking
• Ability to collaborate closely with researchers and infrastructure teams and make clear tradeoffs between implementation effort, performance, reliability, and scientific value
• Experience with Triton, compiler optimization, advanced GPU profiling tools, multiple accelerator generations, long‑sequence or multimodal models, neural time series, or large‑scale model training is a plus

Working Location:

This is an on‑site role based at Blackrock Neurotech's headquarters in Salt Lake City, Utah. Occasional travel may be required.

How We Work

We are a small, experienced team working on consequential problems.

• We take ownership of outcomes and follow through with clarity and accountability
• We prioritize sustained, high‑quality work over performative urgency
• We value rigor, sound judgement and thoughtful decision‑making
• We collaborate deliberately: low ego, high trust and high context
  

This is a high‑ownership role, but it is not an "always-on" one. We expect strong work and our people to have a life outside of it.