AI Systems Performance Engineer - New Graduate

SambaNova Systems; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 135,000 - 165,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Health insurance

Well-being benefits

Job summary

SambaNova Systems is seeking an AI Systems Performance Engineer to bring up and optimize foundation models on its reconfigurable dataflow platform. You’ll work with cutting-edge models like LLMs and multimodal architectures, profiling across model, compiler, runtime, and hardware layers to improve throughput, latency, and memory efficiency.

You will collaborate with ML, compiler, runtime, and hardware teams, exploring new techniques in architecture, quantization, scheduling, and memory

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in computer science, electrical engineering, computer engineering, or a related technical field (completed or expected before start date).
• Strong programming skills in Python, C++, or a similar language.
• Foundations in algorithms, data structures, computer architecture, operating systems, or parallel computing.
• Familiarity with deep learning and at least one major ML framework (PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX).
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills with interest in system performance.
• Ability and enthusiasm to learn across ML, software systems, and hardware.

Responsibilities

• Bring up foundation models on SambaNova platform through software stack.
• Analyze and profile model execution to identify bottlenecks across model, compiler, runtime, and hardware layers.
• Optimize AI workloads for throughput, latency, memory efficiency, and scalability.
• Collaborate with ML, compiler, runtime, and hardware engineers on high-performance AI applications.
• Explore and integrate techniques in model architecture, quantization, scheduling, caching, and memory optimization.
• Develop tools, benchmarks, and performance analysis methodologies for large-scale AI inference.
• Investigate new model architectures and translate research into efficient production implementations.
• Contribute ideas for dataflow, scheduling, and system optimizations for single-node and distributed inference.

Skills

Python

C++

Algorithms & data structures

DL frameworks

Education

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

Tools

CUDA

Triton

OpenCL

vLLM

DeepSpeed

Megatron

TensorRT

Job description

About The Role

We are seeking a talented and highly motivated AI Systems Performance Engineer to bring up and optimize state-of-the-art foundation models on SambaNova's reconfigurable dataflow platform.

You will work hands-on with advanced AI models — such as DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi, GPT OSS, Llama, Qwen, and other frontier architectures — and learn how modern AI systems achieve high throughput, low latency, and efficient large-scale inference.

In this role, you will work at the intersection of machine learning and computer systems, collaborating with engineers across model, compiler, runtime, and hardware teams. This is an ideal opportunity for a new graduate who is passionate about understanding how AI models execute on real hardware and wants to help build the next generation of high-performance AI systems.

Responsibilities

• Bring up cutting-edge foundation models, including LLMs and multimodal models, on the SambaNova platform through the SambaNova software stack.
• Analyze and profile model execution to identify performance bottlenecks across model, compiler, runtime, and hardware layers.
• Optimize AI workloads for throughput, latency, memory efficiency, and scalability.
• Collaborate with machine learning, compiler, runtime, and hardware engineers to develop high-performance AI applications.
• Explore and integrate new techniques in model architecture, quantization, scheduling, caching, and memory optimization.
• Develop tools, benchmarks, and performance analysis methodologies for large-scale AI inference.
• Investigate new model architectures and translate research advances into efficient implementations on production AI systems.
• Contribute ideas for dataflow, scheduling, and system optimizations for both single-node and distributed inference.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in computer science, electrical engineering, computer engineering, or a related technical field (e.g., applied mathematics, physics, or statistics), completed or expected before the start date.
• Strong programming skills in Python, C++, or a similar programming language.
• Solid foundations in algorithms, data structures, computer architecture, operating systems, or parallel computing.
• Familiarity with deep learning and at least one major ML framework, such as PyTorch, TensorFlow, or JAX.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with an interest in understanding and optimizing system performance.
• Ability and enthusiasm to learn across machine learning, software systems, and hardware.

Preferred Qualifications

• Coursework, research, internship, or project experience in machine learning systems, computer architecture, compilers, distributed systems, or high-performance computing.
• Hands-on experience with LLMs, multimodal models, or transformer architectures.
• Familiarity with model inference, KV cache, batching, quantization, or distributed execution.
• Experience with GPU or accelerator programming using CUDA, Triton, OpenCL, or similar technologies.
• Familiarity with frameworks such as vLLM, DeepSpeed, Megatron, or TensorRT.
• Understanding of memory hierarchy, caching, parallelism, or scheduling.
• Experience profiling and optimizing the performance of software or ML workloads.
• Research publications, open-source contributions, programming competitions, or technically challenging personal projects are a plus.

We value strong technical fundamentals, curiosity, and the ability to learn quickly. Prior production experience with large-scale AI systems is not required.

Base Salary Range

$135,000 — $165,000 USD

EEO Policy

SambaNova Systems is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard basis of age (40 and over), color, disability, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, national origin/ancestry, race, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding), sexual orientation, and any other applicable status protected by federal, state, or local laws.

Benefits Summary for US-Based, Full-Time Employment Positions

SambaNova offers a competitive total rewards package, including the base salary, plus equity and benefits. We cover 95% premium coverage for employee medical insurance, and 77% premium coverage for dependents and offer a Health Savings Account (HSA) with employer contribution. We also offer Dental, Vision, Short/Long term Disability, Basic Life, Voluntary Life, and AD&D insurance plans in addition to Flexible Spending Account (FSA) options like Health Care, Limited Purpose, and Dependent Care. Our library of well-being benefits available to you and your dependents includes a full subscription to Headspace, Gympass+ membership with access to physical gyms, One Medical membership, counseling services with an Employee Assistance Program, and much more.