Research Engineer - LLM/VLM Inference Optimization (Seed Infra) San Jose Regular

Bytedance; San Jose (CA); On-site; USD 244,800 - 450,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

401(k) with company match

Paid parental leave

Holiday and paid time off

Job summary

ByteDance Seed Infra in San Jose is seeking a Research Engineer to design, develop, and optimize high-performance inference systems for large-scale LLMs and VLMs. You will work on inference engines, serving frameworks, and end-to-end deployment pipelines, aiming to reduce latency and increase throughput.

Ideal candidates will have strong C/C++ and Python skills, hands-on ML framework experience (PyTorch/TensorFlow), and background in GPU-accelerated optimization.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related field.
• Strong proficiency in C/C++ and Python; solid foundations in algorithms, data structures, and systems programming; familiarity with containerization and server-side debugging.
• Hands-on experience with at least one mainstream machine learning framework (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Experience deploying or optimizing LLM/VLM inference at production scale, with demonstrated impact on latency, throughput, or serving cost.
• Familiarity with GPU architecture and experience optimizing compute-intensive operators (e.g., FlashAttention, GEMM, GEMV, Conv2D).

Responsibilities

• Design, develop, and optimize high-performance inference systems for large-scale LLMs and VLMs, covering inference engines, serving frameworks, and end-to-end deployment pipelines.
• Build state-of-the-art model inference engines through advanced performance optimization techniques such as compiler-level optimizations, parallel computing, graph fusion, efficient CUDA kernel development, low-precision computation, streaming inference, speculative decoding, and high-concurrency request optimization.
• Collaborate with other research teams to identify performance bottlenecks, conduct performance analysis, and optimize large models; contribute to model toolchains and the broader technical ecosystem.

Skills

C/C++

Python

Algorithms

Data structures

Systems programming

Containerization

PyTorch/TensorFlow

CUDA

GPU architectures

Education

Bachelor's degree or above in CS/EE/SE

Tools

TensorRT

Triton

CUTLASS

CUDA/OpenCL

Job description

Research Engineer - LLM/VLM Inference Optimization (Seed Infra)

Location

San Jose

Team

Technology

Employment Type

Regular

Job Code

A02632A

Responsibilities

About the Team

The Seed Infrastructures team oversees the distributed training, reinforcement learning framework, high-performance inference, and heterogeneous hardware compilation technologies for AI foundation models.

• Design, develop, and optimize high-performance inference systems for large-scale LLMs and VLMs, covering inference engines, serving frameworks, and end-to-end deployment pipelines.
• Build state-of-the-art model inference engines through advanced performance optimization techniques such as compiler-level optimizations, parallel computing, graph fusion, efficient CUDA kernel development, low-precision computation, streaming inference, speculative decoding, and high-concurrency request optimization.
• Collaborate closely with other research teams to identify performance bottlenecks, conduct in-depth performance analysis, and optimize large models; contribute to the development of model toolchains and the broader technical ecosystem.

Qualifications

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or above in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Software Engineering, or a related field.
• Strong proficiency in C/C++ and Python; solid foundations in algorithms, data structures, and systems programming; familiarity with containerization and server-side debugging.
• Hands-on experience with at least one mainstream machine learning framework (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow).
• Experience deploying or optimizing LLM/VLM inference at production scale, with demonstrated impact on latency, throughput, or serving cost.
• Familiarity with GPU architecture and experience optimizing compute-intensive operators (e.g., FlashAttention, GEMM, GEMV, Conv2D).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with large-scale LLM serving infrastructure or equivalent production LLM deployment experience.
• Experience in GPU programming (CUDA/OpenCL) and familiarity with frameworks such as TensorRT, Triton, or CUTLASS.
• Experience in performance modeling, profiling, and optimization, or strong knowledge of CPU/GPU architectures.
• Familiarity with model/data parallelism frameworks for distributed inference.

Job Information

The base salary range for this position in the selected city is $244800 - $450000 annually.

Compensation may vary outside of this range depending on a number of factors, including a candidate’s qualifications, skills, competencies and experience, and location. Base pay is one part of the Total Package that is provided to compensate and recognize employees for their work, and this role may be eligible for additional discretionary bonuses/incentives, and restricted stock units.

Benefits

• Employees have day one access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) savings plan with company match, paid parental leave, short-term and long-term disability coverage, life insurance, wellbeing benefits, among others.
• Employees also receive 10 paid holidays per year, 10 paid sick days per year and 17 days of Paid Personal Time (prorated upon hire with increasing accruals by tenure).

The Company reserves the right to modify or change these benefits programs at any time, with or without notice.

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates

• Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state, and local laws including the Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers and the California Fair Chance Act. Our company believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of the conditional offer of employment:
• Interacting and occasionally having unsupervised contact with internal/external clients and/or colleagues;
• Appropriately handling and managing confidential information including proprietary and trade secret information and access to information technology systems;
• Exercising sound judgment.

About Doubao (Seed)

Established in 2023, the ByteDance Seed team is dedicated to pioneering new paths toward artificial general intelligence. We aspire to advance the frontier of intelligence to drive progress for both technology and society.

With a long-term vision for the AI sector, the Seed team's research spans MLLM, GenMedia, AI for Science, and Robotics. We maintain a global presence with laboratories and career opportunities across China, Singapore, and the United States. To date, we have launched industry-leading general foundation models and cutting-edge multimodal capabilities. Our technology powers over 50 application scenarios — including Doubao, Jimeng, TRAE, Dola and Dreamnia — and serves enterprise customers through Volcano Engine and BytePlus. Third-party data shows that the Doubao App ranks first in user volume in the Chinese market, while Doubao foundation models lead the industry in average daily token consumption.

Why Join ByteDance

Inspiring creativity is at the core of ByteDance's mission. Our innovative products are built to help people authentically express themselves, discover and connect – and our global, diverse teams make that possible. Together, we create value for our communities, inspire creativity and enrich life - a mission we work towards every day.

As ByteDancers, we strive to do great things with great people. We lead with curiosity, humility, and a desire to make impact in a rapidly growing tech company. By constantly iterating and fostering an "Always Day 1" mindset, we achieve meaningful breakthroughs for ourselves, our Company, and our users. When we create and grow together, the possibilities are limitless. Join us.

Diversity & Inclusion

ByteDance is committed to creating an inclusive space where employees are valued for their skills, experiences, and unique perspectives. Our platform connects people from across the globe and so does our workplace. At ByteDance, our mission is to inspire creativity and enrich life. To achieve that goal, we are committed to celebrating our diverse voices and to creating an environment that reflects the many communities we reach. We are passionate about this and hope you are too.

Reasonable Accommodation

ByteDance is committed to providing reasonable accommodations in our recruitment processes for candidates with disabilities, pregnancy, sincerely held religious beliefs or other reasons protected by applicable laws. If you need assistance or a reasonable accommodation, please reach out to us at https://tinyurl.com/RA-request