Sr. Technologist – AI Systems & Performance Lab

About the role

We are seeking an experienced and visionary Sr. Technologist to join our organization in Milpitas, United States. This role is director-equivalent in scope and impact, with a strong emphasis on technical leadership and hands-on innovation rather than large team management.

Responsibilities

• Establish and articulate a clear technical vision and charter for the AI Lab, focused on AI workload characterization and performance bottleneck analysis.
• Define the research agenda, success metrics, and execution model aligned with organizational objectives and future technology directions.
• Serve as the technical authority for AI systems performance and workload analysis.
• Drive end-to-end analysis of AI training and inference workloads, spanning models, frameworks, runtimes, and full system stacks.
• Identify performance bottlenecks across compute, memory hierarchy, interconnects, storage, power, and software layers.
• Develop repeatable methodologies for root-cause analysis across heterogeneous platforms (CPU, GPU, NPU, and custom accelerators).
• Architect and oversee the development of benchmarking, profiling, and workload characterization frameworks.
• Evaluate AI performance across multiple hardware configurations and system topologies, ensuring rigor, reproducibility, and scalability.
• Establish best practices for performance measurement, regression tracking, and comparative analysis.
• Partner closely with hardware, platform, and system architecture teams to translate workload insights into actionable design recommendations.
• Collaborate with AI software, product, and business teams to ensure performance findings inform roadmap and investment decisions.
• Influence next-generation system and silicon direction using data-driven insights from real workloads.
• Provide technical mentorship and guidance to a small, highly skilled team of engineers and researchers.
• Drive thought leadership through internal publications, external papers, or patents in AI systems and performance engineering.
• Represent the AI Lab in technical reviews, architecture forums, and executive briefings.
• Ensure AI performance research and system recommendations align with responsible and ethical AI principles.
• Incorporate considerations around efficiency, sustainability, and scalability into workload and system analysis.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a related technical field; Master’s or PhD strongly preferred.
• 15+ years of industry experience in systems engineering, AI infrastructure, performance engineering, computer architecture, or hardware/software co-design.
• Deep hands-on experience with AI workloads (training and/or inference), including modern deep learning models and frameworks (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, or equivalent).
• Strong understanding of end-to-end system performance, including compute architectures, memory hierarchy, interconnects, storage, and software stacks.
• Proven ability to identify, analyze, and root-cause performance bottlenecks across heterogeneous systems (CPU, GPU, NPU, accelerators).
• Demonstrated technical leadership with director-level influence, driving strategy and outcomes without relying on large teams.
• Experience translating complex technical findings into clear architectural recommendations and business-relevant insights.

Qualifications

• PhD or equivalent industry experience in AI systems, computer architecture, performance modeling, or large-scale distributed systems (preferred).
• Hands-on experience with AI accelerators (e.g., GPUs, NPUs, custom silicon) and their software ecosystems (preferred).
• Background in benchmarking, profiling, and workload characterization, including development of custom tools or frameworks (preferred).
• Experience influencing platform, system, or silicon roadmaps using workload-driven, data-backed insights (preferred).
• Familiarity with compiler stacks, runtimes, and low-level performance analysis tools (preferred).
• Track record of technical thought leadership, including patents, publications, standards contributions, or widely adopted internal frameworks (preferred).
• Experience working across hardware, software, and product organizations in highly matrixed environments (preferred).

Leadership & Role Fit

• Comfortable operating as a senior technical authority with broad organizational influence and limited direct reports.
• Demonstrated ability to build new technical capabilities from scratch, including labs, methodologies, and infrastructure.
• Strong mentoring mindset, guiding senior and junior engineers through technical depth rather than formal management.
• Pragmatic, results-oriented approach with the ability to balance research rigor and product impact.

Pay, Benefits & Schedule

Salary Range: $179,733.00 - $297,770.00
Business Function: Memory Systems Design
Work Location: Milpitas Office--LOC_WDT_USCA25
Compensation & Benefits Details: An employee’s pay position within the salary range may be based on several factors including but not limited to (1) relevant education; qualifications; certifications; and experience; (2) skills, ability, knowledge of the job; (3) performance, contribution and results; (4) geographic location; (5) shift; (6) internal and external equity; and (7) business and organizational needs.
Note: No amount of pay is considered to be wages or compensation until such amount is earned, vested, and determinable. The amount and availability of any bonus, commission, benefits, or any other form of compensation and benefits that are allocable to a particular employee remains 60% vested and determinable upon vesting.