Director, AI Research & Silicon Innovation

Advanced Micro Devices; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 300,000 - 600,000; Full time

Job summary

AMD is seeking a Director of AI Research in Santa Clara, CA to define and lead a research program at the intersection of frontier AI and AMD silicon. This senior role requires shaping strategy across reinforcement learning, model training, and AI-for-systems, with impact on AMD’s hardware roadmap and product lines.

You will build and lead a team of researchers and engineers, partner with internal and external collaborators, and translate open-ended research into measurable, deployable outcomes.

Qualifications

• Demonstrated technical leadership in AI/ML research, with a strong track record of impactful published work and/or research shipped into production or frontier models.
• Deep, current expertise in reinforcement learning, large-scale model training, AI-for-systems, or AI performance optimization.
• Experience leading research teams and setting technical direction across multiple concurrent programs.
• Strong understanding of the hardware–software stack underpinning large-model training and inference.
• Ability to remain hands-on with training pipelines, research prototyping, or systems work while leading a team.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence executives, partners, and engineers across organizational boundaries.
• Track record of attracting, hiring, and developing top AI research talent.

Responsibilities

• Define and own a coherent AI research agenda spanning reinforcement learning, model training and optimization, and AI-for-systems, aligned to AMD's strategic priorities.
• Build, lead, and mentor a high‑caliber team of AI researchers and research engineers; set research direction, hiring bar, and standards for technical excellence.
• Prioritize across competing research opportunities and focus the team on the work with the highest leverage for AMD.
• Ensure research translates into impact—influencing the hardware and software roadmap, improving model performance on AMD platforms, and strengthening external partnerships.
• Partner deeply across silicon, architecture, compiler, and software teams, and with external labs and collaborators, to ground research in real problems and real deployment.
• Build the evaluation, infrastructure, and verification practices that make research results trustworthy and reproducible.
• Set and track measurable goals for the research program—verifiable technical milestones, model and workload performance, and roadmap influence.
• Represent AMD's research agenda to executive leadership and to external partners; communicate results, trade-offs, and direction to both technical and business audiences.
• Attract, hire, and develop top AI research talent, and help build AMD's reputation as a destination for serious AI research.
• Stay at the frontier of AI research and translate emerging techniques into opportunity for AMD.

Skills

AI/ML leadership

Research credibility

Hands-on prototyping

Executive communication

Education

PhD in CS/EE/ML or related

Tools

Large-scale training

AI performance optimization

HW/SW stack knowledge

Job description

AMD is seeking a Director of AI Research in Santa Clara, CA to define and lead a research program at the intersection of frontier AI and AMD silicon. This senior role requires shaping strategy across reinforcement learning, model training, and AI-for-systems, with impact on AMD’s hardware roadmap and product lines.

You will build and lead a team of researchers and engineers, partner with internal and external collaborators, and translate open-ended research into measurable, deployable outcomes.