Staff Software Engineer - ML Kernels & Runtime

Graphcore is a company building the future of AI compute, combining semiconductor, software, and AI expertise to create a complete AI compute stack from silicon to datacenter infrastructure. It is part of the SoftBank Group and is expanding its teams globally to address AI opportunities.

Essential:

• Excellent programming and scripting skills using C++ and Python
• Understanding of processor architectures and profiling on Linux
• Proven technical leadership experience including leading work, influencing direction, mentoring, and driving high-quality delivery
• Ability to operate effectively at Staff level balancing hands-on implementation with broader technical ownership and team impact
• Excellent written and oral communication skills, good work ethics, and strong team-work sense

Desirable:

• Strong command of algorithmic performance including vectorisation, memory hierarchy, threading, and lock-free patterns
• Experience testing numerical and performance-sensitive code
• Hands-on experience with reproducibility, determinism, tolerance design, and benchmarking
• Experience with at least one BLAS/DNN stack and ability to read/extend kernels
• Comfort with CPU micro-optimisations and numerical stability/trade-offs across FP32/FP16/BF16/FP8
• Experience integrating native code into PyTorch or similar frameworks (custom ops, extensions, dispatch keys)
• Knowledge of ABI/API stability and packaging on Linux systems (manylinux, wheels)

• Design and implement kernels for linear algebra and tensor operations (GEMM, batched GEMM, convolutions, reductions, elementwise and fused operations) in C++
• Provide technical leadership within the team, defining approaches, reviewing designs, and guiding complex engineering decisions
• Own performance and correctness by adding microbenchmarks, regression tests, and numerics validation
• Profile and optimize for next-generation AI hardware focusing on threading, cache locality, memory layout, and kernel launch efficiency
• Debug issues, resolve bugs, and improve product quality and functionality
• Actively engage in and support Agile ways of working within the team
• Mentor colleagues by sharing knowledge and providing guidance