Job Summary:
Databricks is the data and AI company, and they are seeking a Staff Software Engineer for GenAI Performance and Kernel. In this role, you will own the design and optimization of high-performance GPU kernels for GenAI inference, leading development and mentoring others in performance engineering.
Responsibilities:
โข Lead the design, implementation, benchmarking, and maintenance of core compute kernels (e.g. attention, MLP, softmax, layernorm, memory management) optimized for various hardware backends (GPU, accelerators)
โข Drive the performance roadmap for kernel-level improvements: vectorization, tensorization, tiling, fusion, mixed precision, sparsity, quantization, memory reuse, scheduling, auto-tuning, etc.
โข Integrate kernel optimizations with higher-level ML systems
โข Build and maintain profiling, instrumentation, and verification tooling to detect correctness, performance regressions, numerical issues, and hardware utilization gaps
โข Lead performance investigations and root-cause analysis on inference bottlenecks, e.g. memory bandwidth, cache contention, kernel launch overhead, tensor fragmentation
โข Establish coding patterns, abstractions, and frameworks to modularize kernels for reuse, cross-backend portability, and maintainability
โข Influence system architecture decisions to make kernel improvements more effective (e.g. memory layout, dataflow scheduling, kernel fusion boundaries)
โข Mentor and guide other engineers working on lower-level performance, provide code reviews, help set best practices
โข Collaborate with infrastructure, tooling, and ML teams to roll out kernel-level optimizations into production, and monitor their impact
Qualifications:
Required:
โข BS/MS/PhD in Computer Science, or a related field
โข Deep hands-on experience writing and tuning compute kernels (CUDA, Triton, OpenCL, LLVM IR, assembly or similar sort) for ML workloads
โข Strong knowledge of GPU/accelerator architecture: warp structure, memory hierarchy (global, shared, register, L1/L2 caches), tensor cores, scheduling, SM occupancy, etc.
โข Experience with advanced optimization techniques: tiling, blocking, software pipelining, vectorization, fusion, loop transformations, auto-tuning
โข Familiarity with ML-specific kernel libraries (cuBLAS, cuDNN, CUTLASS, oneDNN, etc.) or open kernels
โข Strong debugging and profiling skills (Nsight, NVProf, perf, vtune, custom instrumentation)
โข Experience reasoning about numerical stability, mixed precision, quantization, and error propagation
โข Experience in integrating optimized kernels into real-world ML inference systems; exposure to distributed inference pipelines, memory management, and runtime systems
โข Experience building high-performance products leveraging GPU acceleration
โข Excellent communication and leadership skills โ able to drive design discussions, mentor colleagues, and make trade-offs visible
โข A track record of shipping performance-critical, high-quality production software
Preferred:
โข Bonus: published in systems/ML performance venues (e.g. MLSys, ASPLOS, ISCA, PPoPP), experience with custom accelerators or FPGA, experience with sparsity or model compression techniques
Company:
Databricks is a data and AI platform that unifies data engineering, analytics, and machine learning on a lakehouse architecture. Founded in 2013, the company is headquartered in San Francisco, USA, with a team of 5001-10000 employees. The company is currently Late Stage.