Senior Software Engineer, Quantized Inference

About the role

NVIDIA is seeking software engineers to accelerate the discovery and deployment of efficient inference recipes for LLMs. A recipe defines which operators are transformed into low-precision or sparsified variants — unlocking throughput and latency gains without regressing accuracy or verbosity. Recipes may incorporate techniques such as rotations, block scaling to attenuate outlier impact, or improved calibration data drawn from SFT/RL pipelines. Each new recipe demands corresponding kernel and model-level implementations in inference engines (vLLM, TRT-LLM, SGLang). The candidate will translate recipe specifications into functionally correct, performant code, e.g., writing Triton kernels, inserting quantize/dequantize nodes into prefill and decode paths, and ensuring per-expert scaling in MoE layers is handled correctly. From there, the candidate will collaborate with partner inference teams to further optimize throughput and interactivity on target workloads. This work is a core component of our productization effort across Megatron-LM, ModelOpt, and vLLM.

What You'll Be Doing

• Implement quantized and sparse recipes in inference engines (vLLM, TRT-LLM, SGLang)
• Own model export pipelines (ModelOpt, Megatron-LM HuggingFace), ensuring quantized checkpoints serialize correctly for downstream serving
• Build prototypes and benchmarking harnesses to evaluate recipe throughput/interactivity before full optimization
• Develop data analysis tooling and visualizations for numerics debugging
• Improve developer productivity across the team: CI, build systems, training infrastructure, pipeline friction
• Participate in code reviews and incorporate feedback

What We Need To See

• Proficient in Python; familiarity with C++
• Strong software engineering fundamentals: concise, well-tested code; fluent with AI-assisted tooling
• Experience with ML accelerators with a basic understanding of how certain ML layers affect execution time
• Familiarity with PyTorch internals (custom ops, autograd, export) or equivalent framework
• Experience reading, modifying, or contributing to a large open-source codebase
• MS/PhD in Computer Science or related field, or equivalent experience. 4+ years in a relevant software engineering role
• Demonstrated ability to move fast with ambiguous requirements, with strong written and verbal communication

Ways To Stand Out From The Crowd

• Experience contributing to inference serving frameworks (vLLM, TRT-LLM, SGLang) or Triton kernel development
• Track record of debugging numerical issues across mixed-precision boundaries
• Deep experience with model compression techniques: PTQ, QAT, structured/unstructured sparsity

Pay

Base salary range: 152,000 USD - 241,500 USD for Level 3, and 184,000 USD - 287,500 USD for Level 4. You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.