Software Engineer - GPU Kernel
FriendliAI
About the job FriendliAI is looking for a GPU Kernel Engineer to design, build, and optimize the low-level compute kernels that power our large-scale, GPU-accelerated AI inference platform. You will be delivering world-class inference speed across NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. With our recent $20M funding, we are scaling our team to meet market demand. This is a deeply technical, high-impact role where you will write GPU code, implement advanced optimizations. As part of our engine team, you will contribute directly to the company’s proprietary inference engine which supports over 450,000 models on Hugging Face. You will work with the inventors of continuous batching and collaborate with the platform team to deploy your work into production. Key Responsibilities Design, implement, and optimize high-performance GPU kernels for AI inference (e.g., GEMM, attention, routing) Develop and maintain GPU code in CUDA and C++, including low-level assembly when needed Implement reduced-precision and quantized kernels (FP8/FP4) for low-latency or high-throughput inference Benchmark and ensure cross-vendor performance parity between NVIDIA and AMD hardware Contribute to internal GPU libraries and tune performance of performance-critical components Accelerate multi-modal model pipelines Investigate and integrate next-generation GPU features Qualifications 3+ years of experience in GPU programming, HPC, or performance-critical systems Bachelor’s or Master’s degrees in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a related field Strong proficiency in CUDA for NVIDIA GPUs or ROCm/HIP for AMD GPUs Deep understanding of GPU architecture: warps, threads, memory hierarchy, synchronization, and latency-throughput trade-offs Proficiency in C++ Experience with GPU profiling and performance tuning Strong numerical background with understanding of precision trade-offs and quantization techniques Preferred Experience Experience optimizing transformer, multi-modal, or Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architectures at the kernel level Familiarity with the latest GPU libraries and frameworks (CUTLASS, Triton, …) Inter-GPU communication programming experience Open-source contributions related to GPU performance or ML acceleration Research or conference presentations on GPU optimization, HPC, or numerical computing Benefits Flexible working hours Daily lunch and dinner provided; unlimited snacks and beverages Supportive and highly collaborative work environment Health check-up support and top‑tier equipment/hardware support A front‑row seat to the generative AI infrastructure revolution Competitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance, and other benefits. #J-18808-Ljbffr FriendliAI
$100k - $120k
Coda Robotics is looking for an experienced engineer to join their founding team, focusing on low-level compute kernels to enhance robotic foundation models. The ideal candidate... ...programming (C/C++, assembly), expertise in GPU optimizations, and familiarity with ML...Suggested- MakerMaker, based in San Francisco, is seeking a highly skilled kernel engineer to write and optimize GPU kernels that enhance performance for training and inference. This role involves deep, low-level work to close the significant performance gap that exists in modern...Suggested
- ...and help build the platform engineers turn to to ship AI products.... ...foundational engineers to lead our GPU Networking efforts, making... ...to architect the software fabric that unifies thousands... ...system behaviors. Optimize Kernels: You will work with communication...SuggestedFlexible hours
- ...searching for a Sr. Systems Performance Software Engineer to own the architecture and performance... ...systems and drive performance across CPU, GPU, and memory boundaries. The ideal... ...experience in robotics software, possesses kernel-level coding skills, and a solid understanding...Suggested
- The San Francisco Compute Company is looking for a talented software engineer to develop their GPU market platform. The role requires familiarity with Rust, multi-threaded programming, and Linux systems. Responsibilities include provisioning servers and designing APIs....Suggested
- ...Software Engineer - C++ / GPU Virtualization / Cloud Infrastructure We are partnered with a high-growth infrastructure startup that is rethinking... .../ Distributed Systems / Cloud Infrastructure / Kernel / Drivers / ML Infrastructure / High-Performance Computing...Permanent employmentInternship
- ...Sciforium Gpu Kernel Engineer Sciforium is an AI infrastructure company developing next-generation multimodal AI models and a proprietary... ...generation large-scale AI systems. You will work across the hardware–software stack, from low-level kernel development to integrating...Flexible hours
- FriendliAI is seeking a GPU Kernel Engineer in San Francisco to design and optimize GPU kernels for AI inference. This role requires expertise in CUDA, C++, and performance-critical systems. You will work on cutting-edge GPU technology and contribute to a highly collaborative...
$285k - $315k
SF Tensor is looking for a Founding GPU Kernel Engineer in San Francisco, specializing in GPU architecture and kernel optimization for machine learning workloads. The ideal candidate has deep expertise, proven capabilities in hand-optimizing performance-critical kernels...Full timeRelocation package- MakerMaker.AI in San Francisco is seeking a skilled Software Engineer to write and optimize GPU kernels. You will work on deep low-level tasks that directly impact the performance of machine learning models. The ideal candidate has over 4 years of experience with GPU kernels...
$100k - $120k
...training and inference workloads grow, we need kernel‑level innovations to reduce latency,... ...Lead a team of kernel and system engineers focused on performance-critical code Design... ...compute kernels for CPU (AVX/ARM NEON), GPU (CUDA/ROCm), and hardware accelerators Find...$285k - $315k
About The Role We're looking for a Founding GPU Kernel Engineer who lives right at the boundary between hardware and software. Someone who thinks in warps, occupancy, and memory hierarchies, and can squeeze every last FLOP out of a GPU. Your job is to go deeper than anyone...Full timeWork at officeRelocation package- ...including BOND, IVP, Spark Capital, Greylock, and Conviction. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to to ship AI products. THE ROLE We’re seeking a GPU Kernel Engineer to join our team at the cutting edge of AI acceleration, where your code directly...Flexible hours
$167.2k - $209k
...world. DigitalOcean is seeking a Senior Engineer 2 to play a key technical role in our AI... ...at the inference engine and GPU kernel layers, ensuring our infrastructure extracts... ...modern GPU families (NVIDIA/AMD) and their software stacks (CUDA, ROCm, TensorRT, OpenAI Triton...Local areaRemote workWorldwideFlexible hours- A leading AI acceleration company in San Francisco is seeking a GPU Kernel Engineer to optimize performance for machine learning models. You will be responsible for designing high-performance GPU kernels and using advanced techniques to boost computation efficiency. Ideal...
$128.7k - $261.3k
Israelvcforum in San Francisco is seeking an experienced developer for their AI Kernels & Compilers team to innovate in autonomous driving technology. The role focuses on designing high-performance GPU kernels, optimizing ML performance, and collaborating cross-functionally....- ...Job Description Job Description Senior Neural Network Kernel Software Development Engineer Our client is making substantial investments in software to enhance the seamless deployment of neural networks on their hardware, streamlining the experience for researchers...
$160k - $230k
...Systems Research Engineer, GPU Programming San Francisco About the Role As a Systems... ...and optimizing GPU-accelerated kernels and algorithms for ML/AI applications.... ...systems. Collaborating with the hardware and software teams, you will contribute to the co-design...Full timeRemote work$230k
...deployment over unchecked growth. About the role As a software engineer on the Fleet High Performance Computing (HPC) team, you will... ...tooling (e.g., PCIe, Infiniband, networking, power management, kernel perf tuning) Knowledge of hardware management protocols...- ...generation of AI‑native silicon while working closely with software and research partners to co‑design hardware tightly... ...AI. About the Role We are looking for a systems‑minded engineer to help advance our kernel development, performance engineering, and hardware‑software...
- Pragmatike is seeking a CUDA Kernel Engineer for a remote position to develop and optimize NVIDIA CUDA kernels for high-performance AI systems. The ideal candidate will have a deep understanding of GPU architecture, performance optimization strategies, and hands-on experience...Remote workRelocation package
$190.9k - $232.8k
About This Role As a staff software engineer for GenAI Performance and Kernel, you will own the design, implementation, optimization, and correctness of the high‑performance GPU kernels powering our GenAI inference stack. You will lead development of highly‑tuned, low‑...Local areaWorldwide- ...technology firm located in San Francisco is seeking a Research Engineer specializing in AI Performance & Kernel Optimization. The role involves enhancing the... ...candidates should have a strong engineering background in GPU kernel development and experience with ML workloads....
$220k
Perplexity is looking for an engineer to join their team in San Francisco. You will work... ...engine, supporting new models, migrating GPU kernels, and developing a Rust-based serving runtime... ...candidate has 3+ years of experience in software engineering with a focus on ML inference...- Asari AI in San Francisco is seeking individuals to optimize high-performance, mission-critical computing systems. You'll work with AI agents to improve performance and design complex systems. The ideal candidate has strong CUDA C experience and fluency in Python and C/...Flexible hours
- A leading AI infrastructure company is seeking a remote Security Engineer to ensure the security of its GPU cloud platform. The ideal candidate has over 5 years of experience in cloud security and strong programming skills. Responsibilities include designing secure architectures...Remote jobFlexible hours
$142.2k - $204.6k
...P-1284 About This Role As a software engineer for GenAI inference, you will help design,... ...touch the full GenAI inference stack - from kernels and runtimes to orchestration and memory... ...etc. Hands-on experience with CUDA, GPU programming, and key libraries (cuBLAS,...Local areaWorldwide$293k
...responsible for the architectural and engineering backbone of OpenAI's... ...models. Our work spans system software, networking, platform... ...of a system, including CPU, GPU, memory subsystem, frontend,... ...Overlap of compute/communication, kernel-level bottlenecks, memory bandwidth...$115k - $140k
...Software Engineer: Perception Los Angeles, US About Lodestar Lodestar's mission is to develop the first "Protect and Defend... ...neural networks and geometric algorithms using CUDA kernels, TensorRT, or other GPU acceleration frameworks Experience with distributed...Permanent employmentFull timeFlexible hours$300k - $405k
...group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business... ...low-level system programming, kernel optimization, and... ...programming, or related low-level software engineering Understand virtualization... ...have experience with: GPU virtualization and...Work at officeVisa sponsorshipFlexible hours
Do you want to receive more vacancies?
Subscribe and receive similar vacancies to Software Engineer - GPU Kernel. Be the first to apply!
- software developer internship no experience San Francisco, CA
- federal - software developer San Francisco, CA
- research software engineer San Francisco, CA
- software engineer contract San Francisco, CA
- part time software developer San Francisco, CA
- software engineer healthcare San Francisco, CA
- network software engineer San Francisco, CA
- ngo software engineer San Francisco, CA
- software development engineer aws San Francisco, CA
- software developer internship San Francisco, CA



