GPU Performance / Kernel Engineer
- Level
- Mid
- Work type
- Hybrid · Bellevue
- Visa
- Not offered
Not stated in the posting: salary.
Open. First seen 2 October 2026.
About the role
GPU Performance / Kernel Engineer
Location: Hybrid | Bellevue, WA (downtown)
Titles: Engineer, Senior and Staff (multiple roles available)
Optimize the Performance Layer Powering Next-Generation AI Infrastructure
About the Opportunity
Designworks Talent's standard text
A well-funded, rapidly growing AI infrastructure company is building a next-generation cloud platform designed to power the full lifecycle of artificial intelligence. The organization is developing a comprehensive AI infrastructure, platform, and services portfolio that supports the full spectrum of AI workloads—including large-scale compute, model training, fine-tuning, inference, and emerging agentic AI applications.
Backed by significant long-term investment, the company combines the speed, ownership, and innovation of a startup with the stability and resources of an established parent organization. Engineering teams are intentionally lean, highly collaborative, and AI-native, leveraging modern tooling and automation to build infrastructure capable of supporting the industry's most demanding AI workloads.
We're seeking GPU Performance / Kernel Engineers to optimize the data plane powering large-scale AI workloads. This role focuses on improving GPU utilization, reducing latency, and maximizing throughput across training and inference environments by tuning kernels, identifying performance bottlenecks, and driving efficiency across the GPU fleet.
The Opportunity
This is a high-impact engineering role focused on extracting maximum performance from large-scale GPU infrastructure. You'll work at the intersection of GPU architecture, AI workloads, systems performance, and low-level optimization.
As part of a highly technical infrastructure team, you'll analyze workload behavior, optimize performance-critical code paths, and develop the techniques and tooling required to operate AI systems efficiently at scale.
This opportunity is ideal for engineers who enjoy deep technical challenges involving GPU computing, kernel optimization, distributed AI workloads, and hardware/software performance.
What You'll Do
- Profile, analyze, and optimize GPU kernels to improve latency, throughput, and overall utilization.
- Identify and eliminate data-plane bottlenecks impacting GPU performance across large-scale AI workloads.
- Tune performance-critical workloads across training and inference environments.
- Work closely with AI infrastructure, machine learning, and platform engineering teams to understand workload characteristics and optimize system behavior.
- Develop benchmarking methodologies and performance measurement practices across GPU infrastructure.
- Evaluate emerging GPU technologies, performance tools, and optimization techniques as hardware platforms evolve.
- Contribute to engineering practices that improve GPU efficiency, scalability, and reliability across the fleet.
What We're Looking For
- Strong experience with GPU kernel development and performance optimization using technologies such as CUDA, ROCm, or comparable GPU programming frameworks.
- Demonstrated experience improving GPU utilization, reducing latency, or increasing throughput for production AI workloads.
- Strong understanding of GPU architecture, memory hierarchy, parallel computing, and the data path from application layer to hardware execution.
- Experience profiling and debugging performance issues in complex AI or distributed computing environments.
- Ability to independently own technically complex problems and drive solutions in a fast-moving engineering environment.
- Strong systems programming and performance engineering mindset.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience optimizing workloads across multiple GPU platforms, including NVIDIA and AMD architectures.
- Experience with GPU compiler technologies, runtime optimization, or low-level systems performance.
- Contributions to open-source GPU performance projects, compiler tooling, or AI systems optimization.
- Background working with large-scale AI training, inference platforms, HPC environments, or cloud GPU infrastructure.
- Familiarity with GPU profiling and optimization tools such as Nsight Systems, Nsight Compute, ROCm profiling tools, or similar technologies.
Compensation
- Competitive base pay for Bellevue market
- Certain roles are eligible for additional rewards, including merit increases, annual bonus, and long term incentives. These awards are allocated based on individual performance
- U.S. based employees have access to medical, dental, and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan and company match, employees also receive per calendar year, paid holidays.
Location
- Hybrid role based in the Bellevue, WA area.
- Approximately three days per week in the office.
- Candidates elsewhere in the U.S. who are open to relocation are encouraged to apply.
- U.S. work authorization is required. Visa sponsorship is not currently available.
Why Join?
- Optimize the performance layer behind one of the industry's most advanced AI infrastructure platforms.
- Work directly on GPU efficiency, kernel optimization, and large-scale AI workload performance.
- Solve some of the hardest challenges in AI systems engineering—maximizing utilization, minimizing latency, and scaling compute efficiently.
- Join early enough to influence architecture, tooling, and performance engineering practices.
- Collaborate with world-class engineers building the infrastructure powering the next generation of AI applications.
- Enjoy the technical ownership and impact of a startup environment backed by significant long-term investment.
What this role asks for
Particular to this role
CUDA
Rare in Designworks Talent's other 36 open postings.
92% of this description is written for the role. The rest is Designworks Talent's standard text, folded away below.
Read against Designworks Talent's other open postings on this site.
The team: AI Infrastructure
This role is one of 31 open in AI Infrastructure. 30 were posted in the last 30 days, including 4 lead roles: the team is hiring the people who run it too.
WHAT THE TEAM WORKS WITH, ACROSS ITS POSTINGS
Kubernetes (13 of 31), Machine Learning (12 of 31), Datadog (7 of 31), Grafana (7 of 31), Linux (7 of 31), PagerDuty (7 of 31), Prometheus (7 of 31)
OTHER ROLES ON THIS TEAM
- Technical Program Leader - AI Infrastructure posted Oct 7
- Staff Senior Virtualization & Orchestration Engineer posted Oct 7
- Senior Virtualization & Orchestration Engineer posted Oct 7
- Virtualization & Orchestration Engineer posted Oct 7
- Staff Inference Engineer posted Oct 7
- Senior Inference Engineer posted Oct 7
- Principal Hardware Design Engineer posted Oct 7
- Staff Hardware Design Engineer posted Oct 7
- Staff GPU Performance / Kernel Engineer posted Oct 7
- Senior GPU Performance / Kernel Engineer posted Oct 7
- Data Center Operations and Maintenance Senior Director posted Oct 7
- Data Center Operations and Maintenance Director posted Oct 7
- Data Center Operations and Maintenance Manager posted Oct 7
- VP, Data Center Operations and Maintenance posted Oct 7
- Staff Principal Data Center Operations and Maintenance Engineer posted Oct 7
- Senior Data Center Operations and Maintenance Engineer posted Oct 7
- Principal Data Center Operations and Maintenance Engineer posted Oct 7
- Data Center Network Engineer posted Oct 7
- Staff Data Center Network Engineer posted Oct 7
- Principal Staff Data Center Network Engineer posted Oct 7
- Senior Data Center Infrastructure Software Engineer posted Oct 7
- Staff Data Center Infrastructure Software Engineer posted Oct 7
- Principal Data Center Infrastructure Software Engineer posted Oct 7
- Applied Researcher – Network Expert posted Oct 7
- Applied Researcher – Data Centers posted Oct 7
- Applied Researcher – AI Expert posted Oct 7
- Senior AI Training Infrastructure Engineer posted Oct 7
- Staff AI Training Infrastructure Engineer posted Oct 7
- AI Training Infrastructure Engineer posted Oct 7
- Vice President - AI Infrastructure Engineering posted Sep 13
From the team and dates on Designworks Talent's own job board.
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