Inference Technical Lead, On-Device Transformers

OpenAI; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading AI research firm in San Francisco is seeking a Technical Lead to join its Future of Computing Research team. This role involves evaluating silicon platforms and optimizing model architectures while working in a hybrid model. Ideal candidates have expertise in evaluating workloads on accelerators, understanding transformer models, and leading teams focused on performance-critical software. The position offers relocation assistance and is centered on deploying cutting-edge AI technology responsibly and effectively.

Qualifications

• Experience with GPUs, NPUs, or other specialized accelerators.
• Understanding of memory bandwidth requirements in transformer models.
• Experience in optimization of inference engines and hardware-aware ML pipelines.

Responsibilities

• Evaluate silicon platforms for on-device deployment.
• Co-design model architectures with research teams.
• Analyze system performance, optimizing trade-offs.
• Lead a team responsible for low-level inference stack.
• Transform research capabilities into practical applications.

Skills

Experience evaluating or deploying workloads on GPUs

Understanding transformer model performance characteristics

Designing high-performance compute systems

Building or leading teams on performance-critical software

Experience with CUDA kernels

Job description

About the Team

The Future of Computing Research team is an applied research team in the Consumer Devices group focused on developing new methods and models to support our vision as we advance forward in our mission of building AGI that benefits all of humanity.

About the Role

As a Technical Lead on the Future of Computing Research team, you will work together with both the best ML researchers in the world and the greatest design talent of our generation to push the frontier of model capabilities.

This role is based in San Francisco, CA. We follow a hybrid model with 4 days a week in the office and offer relocation assistance to new employees.

In this role, you will:

• Evaluate and select silicon platforms (GPUs, NPUs, and specialized accelerators) for on-device and edge deployment of OpenAI models.
• Work closely with research teams to co-design model architectures that meet real-world deployment constraints such as latency, memory, power, and bandwidth.
• Analyze and model system performance, identifying tradeoffs between model design, memory hierarchy, compute throughput, and hardware capabilities.
• Partner with hardware vendors and internal infrastructure teams to bring up new accelerators and ensure efficient execution of transformer workloads.
• Build and lead a team of engineers responsible for implementing the low-level inference stack, including kernel development and runtime systems.
• Run through the necessary walls to take nascent research capabilities and turn them into capabilities we can build on top of.

You might thrive in this role if you:

• Have experience evaluating or deploying workloads on GPUs, NPUs, or other specialized accelerators.
• Understand the performance characteristics of transformer models, including attention, KV-cache behavior, and memory bandwidth requirements.
• Have designed or optimized high-performance compute systems, such as inference engines, distributed runtimes, or hardware-aware ML pipelines.
• Have experience building or leading teams working on low-level performance-critical software such as CUDA kernels, compilers, or ML runtimes.
• Have already spent time in the weeds teaching models to speak and perceive.

About OpenAI

OpenAI is an AI research and deployment company dedicated to ensuring that general-purpose artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity. We push the boundaries of the capabilities of AI systems and seek to safely deploy them to the world through our products. AI is an extremely powerful tool that must be created with safety and human needs at its core, and to achieve our mission, we must encompass and value the many different perspectives, voices, and experiences that form the full spectrum of humanity.

We are an equal opportunity employer, and we do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, age, veteran status, disability, genetic information, or other applicable legally protected characteristic.

For additional information, please see OpenAI’s Affirmative Action and Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement.

Background checks for applicants will be administered in accordance with applicable law, and qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment consistent with those laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act, for US-based candidates. For unincorporated Los Angeles County workers: we reasonably believe that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship with the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: protect computer hardware entrusted to you from theft, loss or damage; return all computer hardware in your possession (including the data contained therein) upon termination of employment or end of assignment; and maintain the confidentiality of proprietary, confidential, and non-public information. In addition, job duties require access to secure and protected information technology systems and related data security obligations.

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