Performance Modeling Lead

Skills

About the Role

You will build and lead a small team that answers forward-looking architectural questions for AI infrastructure. You'll own a performance modeling framework, quantify tradeoffs across compute, memory, networking and storage, and turn results into clear recommendations for internal teams and hardware vendors. You'll partner with ML, systems and hardware teams and lead 2–3 engineers. The role is based in San Francisco with a hybrid schedule of 3 days in the office per week.

Requirements

• Experience owning or building performance modeling frameworks that drive system design decisions
• Deep knowledge of AI/ML workloads, including training and/or inference at scale
• Understanding of system-level tradeoffs across compute, memory, and networking in distributed systems
• Comfort working across abstraction layers
• Experience using analytical or simulation modeling to inform architecture decisions
• Ability to operate in ambiguous problem spaces
• Clear communication and influence with internal and external partners

Responsibilities

• Build and own a performance modeling framework and toolchain for evaluating AI systems
• Analyze architectural tradeoffs across compute, memory, networking, storage, and topology
• Develop models guiding scale-up vs scale-out, interconnect and network design, and memory hierarchy decisions
• Translate modeling outputs into recommendations for internal teams and hardware vendors
• Influence reference designs and vendor roadmaps with data-driven insights
• Partner with machine learning, systems, and hardware teams
• Lead and grow a small team of 2–3 engineers
• Validate models against real system behavior and measurements

Benefits

• Equity
• Medical, dental, and vision insurance with employer HSA contributions
• Pre-tax Health FSA, Dependent Care FSA, and commuter accounts
• 401(k) with employer match
• Paid parental leave (up to 24 weeks for birth parents and 20 weeks for non-birthing parents)
• Paid medical and caregiver leave (up to 8 weeks)
• Flexible PTO for exempt employees; up to 15 days for non-exempt employees
• 13+ paid company holidays and coordinated office closures
• Paid sick or safe time
• Mental health and wellness support
• Employer-paid basic life and disability coverage
• Annual learning and development stipend
• Daily meals in offices and meal delivery credits
• Relocation support
• Charitable donation matching and wellness stipends
• Performance-related bonus