Research Engineer

Stack

Responsibilities

• ▹Optimize large-scale training and inference workloads across GPUs, accelerators, and distributed systems
• ▹Work directly with customers to analyze workloads and improve performance, scalability, and reliability
• ▹Develop inference pipelines, model serving systems, and performance-oriented tooling for production AI
• ▹Design and implement profiling, debugging, and observability tools to guide optimization
• ▹Work across the software stack so performance improvements are accessible via clean APIs and automation
• ▹Partner with hardware vendors and ecosystem partners for efficient execution (NVIDIA, TPU, emerging accelerators)
• ▹Contribute to open-source projects: features, tooling, documentation, community engagement

Requirements

• ▹Strong expertise with deep learning frameworks, especially PyTorch
• ▹Experience with large-scale training or inference workloads
• ▹Familiarity with distributed systems and parallelism strategies (data/model/pipeline parallelism, checkpointing, elastic scaling, distributed inference)
• ▹Strong software engineering fundamentals: API design, tooling, debugging complex systems, production-quality code
• ▹Experience analyzing and improving performance bottlenecks in ML systems or distributed workloads
• ▹Excellent collaboration and communication skills, including with customers and external contributors
• ▹Ability to work in ambiguous, fast-moving environments across multiple layers of the stack
• ▹Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field

Nice to have

• ▹Experience with inference optimization: quantization, speculative decoding, mixed precision, memory-efficient training, throughput/latency optimization
• ▹Experience with CUDA, Triton, TensorRT, vLLM, SGLang, Dynamo, or related ML systems/inference tooling
• ▹Experience contributing to open-source ML, infrastructure, or AI systems projects
• ▹Startup experience or highly cross-functional environments
• ▹Advanced degree (Master's or PhD) in AI, machine learning, systems, or related fields

Soft skills

What we offer

• ▹Anticipated annual base salary $120,000-$250,000, with discretionary bonus and meaningful equity
• ▹Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage (U.S.); private medical and dental insurance (U.K.)
• ▹Retirement and financial wellness support (U.S.); pension contribution (U.K.)
• ▹Generous paid time off, plus holidays
• ▹Paid parental leave
• ▹Professional development support
• ▹Wellness and work-from-home stipends
• ▹Flexible work environment

About the company

Lightning AI is the company behind PyTorch Lightning, building an end-to-end platform for developing, training, and deploying AI systems since 2019. Following its merger with Voltage Park, it combines developer-first software with cost-efficient, large-scale compute. With hubs in New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and London, it is backed by Coatue, Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Firstminute.