Senior NPU Kernel Operator Engineer

Senior AI Accelerator Performance Engineer (Kernels & Operators)Location: Flexible, to be discussedSalary: Highly competitive, based on experienceSector: AI Hardware / High-Performance ComputingThe OpportunityI'm partnering with a forward-thinking technology business building next-generation AI compute. They're looking for a Senior Performance Engineer to design, write and tune the low-level kernels and operators that sit at the heart of their AI stack.You'll be the bridge between algorithms and silicon: taking the mathematical building blocks of modern AI models and turning them into implementations that squeeze every bit of performance out of the hardware. Expect to work closely with architecture, compiler and software teams, with real influence over how workloads run on the platform.This suits a seasoned engineer who enjoys working close to the metal and gets genuine satisfaction from making fast code faster.What You'll BringMust-havesDegree (BSc, MSc or PhD) in Computer Science, Computer/Electrical Engineering or a similar field5+ years in a performance-focused role, such as HPC, accelerator or GPU programming, compilers, embedded systems or processor optimisationExcellent C and C++Deep understanding of computer architecture: memory hierarchy, data movement, parallelism and throughputA track record of speeding up performance-critical maths or compute workloadsComfort profiling code, pinpointing bottlenecks and fixing them methodicallyA problem-solver who's happy working across the hardware/software boundaryStrongly preferredHands-on experience with low-level parallel or accelerated programming modelsPractical use of tiling, memory management, vectorisation, instruction-level tuning and concurrencyExperience optimising numerical or ML workloads specificallyAbility to reason about latency, bandwidth, utilisation and efficiency trade-offsExperience debugging tricky correctness, precision and performance issuesNice to haveCUDA, OpenCL or comparable parallel programming frameworksExposure to compilers, code generation or kernel autotuning toolsFamiliarity with common ML, linear algebra or image processing operatorsKnowledge of low-precision and quantised number formatsExperience with custom silicon, FPGAs, simulators, emulators or bring-up on real hardwareCross-team collaboration with architecture and infrastructure groupsMentoring others or setting up performance engineering best practiceInterested or know someone who might be? Get in touch for a confidential conversation. Darwin Recruitment is acting as an Employment Agency in relation to this vacancy.