AI Engineer & Researcher - GPU Kernel jobs in United States
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xAI · 6 days ago

AI Engineer & Researcher - GPU Kernel

positionPalo Alto, CA
timeFull-time
remoteOnsite
senioritySenior Level
money$180K/yr - $440K/yr

xAI is a company focused on creating AI systems that enhance humanity's understanding of the universe. They are looking for an AI Engineer & Researcher to develop and optimize low-level CUDA kernel operations for advanced inference and training software, while also innovating new ideas to maximize GPU capabilities.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)Foundational AIGenerative AIInformation TechnologyMachine Learning
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Growth Opportunities
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H1B Sponsor Likelynote

Responsibilities

Developing and improving low-level CUDA kernel optimizations for state-of-the-art inference and training software stack
Profiling, debugging, and optimizing single and multi-GPU operations using tools such as Nsight
Understanding GPU memory hierarchy and computation capabilities
Implementing the latest methods from the deep learning literature in low-level CUDA kernels
Innovating new ideas that bring us closer to the limits of a GPU

Qualification

CUDAC/C++PythonNsightGeMM CUDA kernelsPrioritization skillsCommunication skillsWork ethic

Required

Strong communication skills
Experience with CUDA
Experience with CUTLASS
Proficiency in C/C++ and Python binding tools
Experience in developing and improving low-level CUDA kernel optimizations for inference and training software stack
Experience in profiling, debugging, and optimizing single and multi-GPU operations using tools such as Nsight
Understanding of GPU memory hierarchy and computation capabilities
Ability to implement methods from deep learning literature in low-level CUDA kernels
Ability to innovate new ideas for GPU optimization
Experience in building high-performance GeMM CUDA kernels using Tensor cores or CUDA cores
Experience in implementing features for attention kernel
Comfortable with writing both forward and backward kernels
Experience in optimizing for memory-bound and compute-bound operations
Ability to reason about register pressure, shared-memory usage, and GPU utilization
Familiarity with techniques in optimizing inference and training workloads
Experience using pybind to integrate custom-written kernels into a framework, especially JAX/XLA

Company

xAI

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XAI is an artificial intelligence startup that develops AI solutions and tools to enhance reasoning and search capabilities.
dateFounded in 2023
location
Burlingame, California, USA
people-size11-50 employees
web-link
https://x.ai

H1B Sponsorship

xAI has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (1)

Funding

Current Stage
Late Stage
Total Funding
$42.73B
Key Investors
Neptune Digital AssetsSpaceXMorgan Stanley
2026-01-06Series E· $20B
2025-12-11Secondary Market· $0.3M
2025-07-13Corporate Round· $5.32B

Leadership Team

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Toby Pohlen
Founding Member
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Company data provided by crunchbase