Director, Applied AI for Systems & Hardware

Socket.dev; Santa Clara (CA); On-site; USD 320,000 - 440,000; Full time

Job summary

AMD is seeking a Director of Applied AI Research to lead research at the intersection of AI, compute, and hardware. You will head a team of applied researchers and research engineers, setting direction across compute- and hardware-focused workstreams and guiding ideas from concept to validated capability.

You will collaborate with our AI research teams and hardware engineering teams to make this happen, designing evaluation and verification pipelines and ensuring measurable impact in real

Qualifications

• Experience leading applied AI/ML research with real systems impact.
• Expertise in reinforcement learning, including reward modeling and pipelines.
• Background in AI-for-systems and compute/hardware problems (kernels, compilers, co-design).

Responsibilities

• Define and own an applied AI research agenda focused on compute and hardware—kernel and compiler optimization, PPA and design-space exploration, and AI-for-systems.
• Build, lead, and mentor a high-caliber team of applied researchers and research engineers; set research direction, hiring bar, and rigor standards.
• Use recursive self-improvement loops to drive verifiable gains on concrete compute and hardware targets.
• Design and partner with teams to own evaluation, simulation, and verification infrastructure that makes results trustworthy and adoption-ready.
• Confront practical failure modes of RL and self-improving loops and mitigate them.
• Own the full path from research to impact: frame the problem, run experiments, validate results, land in real flows.
• Partner across silicon, architecture, compiler, software, and AI-for-hardware teams to ground research in real problems.
• Set and track measurable outcomes—performance and PPA gains, cycle-time reduction, feedback into loop.
• Represent the applied research agenda to executive leadership with progress and roadmap implications.

Skills

Applied AI leadership

Reinforcement learning

AI for systems

Cross-functional leadership

Education

PhD in CS/EE/ML

Tools

Simulation tools

Job description

AMD is seeking a Director of Applied AI Research to lead research at the intersection of AI, compute, and hardware. You will head a team of applied researchers and research engineers, setting direction across compute- and hardware-focused workstreams and guiding ideas from concept to validated capability.

You will collaborate with our AI research teams and hardware engineering teams to make this happen, designing evaluation and verification pipelines and ensuring measurable impact in real