Senior Software Engineer – AI Kernel (AI/Startup) – Silicon Valley

Our premier Silicon Valley AI startup client is hiring a Senior Software Engineer to design and implement high-performance compute kernels for their AI system. This role will include writing code for Linux kernel memory applications.

Note: All candidates MUST have at least 5 years of experience writing Linux kernel applications.

Responsibilities:

• Design and implement high-performance compute kernels for AI primitives such as GEMM, attention, normalization, and convolution.
• Optimize for throughput, latency, and memory hierarchy across heterogeneous compute units (SIMD, matrix engines, DMA).
• Collaborate with compiler and runtime teams to integrate kernels into Triton, PyTorch, or SYCL pipelines.
• Profile and tune kernels using tools like Perfetto, VTune, Tracy, or custom simulators.
• Prototype and evaluate precision formats (FP16/BF16/FP8/e5m2, etc.) and stochastic rounding.
• Contribute to micro-architecture feedback loops, helping co-design ISA and memory features with the hardware team.
• Write clear, well-structured, and reusable code (C++/CUDA/Triton/LLVM MLIR).

Requirements:

• Bachelor’s or Master’s in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field.
• 7+ years of experience writing code for Linux based kernel applications.
• Strong background in parallel programming (CUDA, Triton, SYCL, OpenCL, Metal, POSIX Threads, or OpenMP).
• Experience with optimization of irregular algorithms, such as graph computations or sparse numerical linear algebra, combining high-level data structure design with low-level SIMD and synchronization optimizations.
• Deep understanding of memory layout, vectorization, thread/block scheduling, and cache behavior.
• Proficiency in C++11 or higher, with strong knowledge of standard algorithms, data structures, and generic programming paradigms.
• Experience with code generation for high-performance computations and knowledge of frameworks like BLAS/BLIS/Torch
• Hands-on experience profiling and optimizing compute or AI workloads (e.g., GEMM, softmax, attention).
• Solid grasp of numerical stability, precision formats, and mixed precision arithmetic.

Visa Requirements:

• Will transfer H1-B and TN Visas for candidates that resides in the San Francisco Bay/Silicon Valley Area.

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