AI Technical Lead

NIO Inc. is a pioneer and a leading company in the global smart electric vehicle market. Founded in November 2014, NIO aspires to shape a sustainable and brighter future with the mission of “Blue Sky Coming”. NIO envisions itself as a user enterprise where innovative technology meets experience excellence. NIO designs, develops, manufactures and sells smart electric vehicles, driving innovations in next-generation core technologies. NIO distinguishes itself through continuous technological breakthroughs and innovations, exceptional products and services, and a community for shared growth. NIO provides premium smart electric vehicles under the NIO brand, family-oriented smart electric vehicles through the ONVO brand, and small smart high-end electric cars with the FIREFLY brand.

Responsibilities

• Architect the Hybrid AI Vision: Lead the architectural design and strategic vision for hybrid inference systems, dynamically distributing Large Language Model (LLM) and Vision-Language Model (VLM) workloads across edge computing environments and cloud infrastructure.
• Team Leadership & Innovation: Lead, mentor, and inspire a team of specialized engineers working across distributed systems orchestration, inference optimization, and AI compiler engineering. While you are not expected to be a hands-on master of every domain, you will drive the overarching technical roadmap, foster a culture of cutting-edge innovation, and guide domain experts in navigating complex system tradeoffs.
• Design Dynamic Orchestration & Resilience: Oversee the architecture of high-availability orchestration engines that intelligently route inference tasks. Guide the team in developing cascading inference mechanisms, dynamic model fallback strategies, and robust telemetry to ensure continuous, steady-state inference under varying connectivity constraints.

Qualifications

Education & Experience

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, or a related field with 8+ years of relevant industry experience (or Master’s degree with 12+ years), including proven experience leading technical teams or driving complex architectural roadmaps.

End-to-End Systems Leadership (T-Shaped Profile)

Demonstrated capability to lead full-stack AI systems engineering. You possess deep, hands-on mastery in at least one or two of the following core domains, coupled with the comprehensive systemic breadth required to effectively lead engineers working across the others:

• Distributed Systems & Hybrid Inference: Designing, scaling, and deploying production-grade distributed ML systems. Balancing cloud infrastructure with edge constraints using modern routing paradigms, such as cascading inference architectures and semantic routing.
• Algorithmic & Inference Optimization: Proven experience optimizing state-of-the-art LLM/VLM inference pipelines. Deep understanding of model compression (e.g., PTQ, QAT, AWQ, FP8/INT4), hardware-aware compute optimizations (e.g., FlashAttention), and advanced memory management (e.g., PagedAttention, KV cache compression/eviction).
• Advanced Systems & Compiler Engineering: C++ and production-grade Python proficiency. Deep understanding of edge/cloud model-serving frameworks (e.g., vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, ExecuTorch, MLC-LLM) and AI compilers (e.g., MLIR, Apache TVM, Triton) for compute graph optimization and custom kernel development.

Preferred Qualifications

• Privacy & Security: Deep understanding of privacy-preserving AI techniques (federated learning, differential privacy, secure enclaves) essential for processing sensitive data across edge and cloud environments.
• Community Engagement & Open Source: Publications in relevant AI, ML, or systems conferences (e.g., NeurIPS, ICML, MLSys), or active contributions to open-source ML infrastructure projects (e.g., vLLM, ONNX Runtime, Apache TVM, llama.cpp).

Pay

The US base salary range for this full-time position is $192,100.00 - $249,600.00. Within the range, individual pay is determined by work location and additional factors, including job-related skills, experience, and relevant education or training.

Benefits

• Anthem Blue Cross, HSA, and Kaiser HMO medical plans with $0 for Employee Only Coverage.
• Dental (including orthodontic coverage) and vision plan. Both provide options with a $0 paycheck contribution covering you and your eligible dependents.
• Company Paid HSA (Health Savings Account) Contribution when enrolled in the High Deductible Anthem Blue Cross medical plan.
• Healthcare and Dependent Care Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA).
• 401(k) with Brokerage Link option.
• Company paid Basic Life, AD&D, short-term and long-term disability insurance.
• Employee Assistance Program.
• Sick and Vacation time.
• 13 Paid Holidays a year.
• Paid Parental Leave for first 8 weeks at full pay (eligible after 90 days of employment with NIO).
• Paid Disability Leave for first 6 weeks at full pay (eligible after 90 days of employment with NIO).
• Voluntary benefits including: Voluntary Life and AD&D options for you, your spouse/domestic partner and dependent child(ren), pet insurance.
• Commuter benefits.
• Mobile Cell Phone Credit.
• Free lunch and snacks.
• Onsite gym.
• Employee discounts and perks program.