Senior AI Software Engineer - Model Training (f/m/d)
Aleph Alpha, one of the few companies in Europe doing serious foundation model pre- and post-training, is hiring exceptional Software Engineers for its model training team (most of the team is based in Heidelberg). The role spans the full stack: some weeks optimizing how training loads are scheduled on the cluster and making the pipeline more robust and performant, other weeks enabling large-scale code execution for reinforcement learning, or digging into the evaluation codebase to lift inference throughput on evals. The team is still building out its training pipeline and infrastructure, so the role carries real influence over what gets built. The culture favors Extreme Programming, trunk-based development, and mob programming. The team values ability over experience and does not require prior ML experience.
Stack
Responsibilities
- ▹Co-own the training pipeline end-to-end: design, build, and maintain the infrastructure and components that enable fast iteration on experiments
- ▹Build high-quality tooling and deliberately invest in tooling and infrastructure for long-term success
- ▹Collaborate across disciplines in cross-functional teams where engineers and researchers work closely together
- ▹Champion good engineering practices: working incrementally, maintaining fast feedback loops, and refactoring continuously
- ▹Shape the direction of the team, driving changes such as more GPUs, a different storage system, or team setup changes
Requirements
- ▹A track record of taking initiative to deliver high-impact work
- ▹Experience contributing in high-performing teams
- ▹Degree in computer science, engineering, or a related field
- ▹Willingness to relocate to Germany (primary locations are Heidelberg, preferred, and Berlin, with some flexibility but regular, potentially weekly, travel to Heidelberg)
- ▹Ability to write software that other strong engineers want to read and build on
- ▹Desire to take ownership of problems and collaborate with other teams to solve them
- ▹Deep interest in how state-of-the-art foundation models work
- ▹Strong communication skills, with the ability to convey technical solutions to diverse audiences
Nice to have
- ▹Experience working with distributed systems
- ▹Experience working with Kubernetes
- ▹Experience bringing AI research innovations into production
- ▹Experience in large-scale data processing or distributed computation for foundation model training or inference
- ▹Experience with performance engineering: profiling, benchmarking, and optimizing code for throughput, latency, or memory
Soft skills
What we offer
- ▹30 days of paid vacation
- ▹Access to a variety of fitness and wellness offerings via Wellhub
- ▹Mental health support through nilo.health
- ▹Substantially subsidized company pension plan
- ▹Subsidized Germany-wide transportation ticket
- ▹Budget for additional technical equipment
- ▹Flexible working hours and a hybrid working model
- ▹Virtual Stock Option Plan
- ▹JobRad bike lease