Founding Kernel Engineer

Luminal; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 250,000; Full time

Job summary

Luminal in San Francisco seeks a researcher to design and optimize faster AI kernels. You will work closely with the compiler team to identify performance bottlenecks and drive kernel improvements on real hardware.

The role focuses on agent-driven kernel research, automated performance exploration, and applying optimizations to inference and training workloads, on-site in SF. US visa sponsorship is available.

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience developing GPU kernels.
• No degree requirement. Researchers, recent PhDs, and candidates with substantial relevant projects are welcome.

Responsibilities

• Research and build faster kernels for AI workloads.
• Collaborate with the compiler team to identify performance bottlenecks.
• Optimize through correctness checks, benchmarking, and execution on real hardware.

Job description

Qualifications

• Hands-on experience developing GPU kernels.

Nice to haves

• Prior work on kernel autoresearch frameworks is a very strong positive.

• Experience with ML compilers is a strong positive, but not required.

• Hardware performance analysis, memory hierarchies, parallel execution, and benchmarking.

• CUDA, Triton, GPU instruction sets, or compiler systems such as MLIR/LLVM and PyTorch backends.

• Rust, open-source compiler contributions, or work on other accelerators.

No degree requirement. Researchers, recent PhDs, and candidates with substantial relevant projects are welcome.

Company

Luminal (YC S25) builds an AI compiler and serving stack that optimizes models for faster, more efficient execution across accelerators. We're a small team working in person in San Francisco.

Role

Research and build faster kernels for AI workloads. You'll work closely with the compiler team, investigate performance bottlenecks, and take optimizations through correctness checks, benchmarking, and execution on real hardware.

Our focus includes:

• Agent-driven systems that write, test, and improve kernels.

• Automated kernel research and search-based performance optimization.

• More efficient execution for inference and LLM training.

Candidates who require a US visa are welcome to apply.

Location and compensation

San Francisco, CA, US · Full-time · On-site. Annual base salary: $150,000–$250,000 USD. Equity: 0.15%–0.75%. Visa: Will sponsor.