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Director, AI Research - Recursive Self-Improvement

AMD· Engineering
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Santa Clara, CA$246.4kFull-timePosted 2mo ago

About the role

Director-level AI research leader responsible for AMD's recursive self-improvement (RSI) program, applying reinforcement learning to hardware design, kernel and compiler optimization, and engineering workflows to create compounding internal advantages.

Responsibilities

  • Define and own AMD's internal recursive self-improvement research agenda—where AI improves AMD's hardware, kernels, compilers, and engineering workflows, and how those gains compound over time
  • Build, lead, and mentor a high-caliber team of AI researchers and research engineers; set research direction, hiring bar, and standards for technical rigor
  • Drive RL-based research on concrete internal targets—kernel and PPA optimization, design-space exploration, and code/workflow generation—grounded in measurable, verifiable improvement
  • Design and own the verification and evaluation infrastructure (fast simulators, "slice" verifiers, benchmarks) needed to run self-improvement loops safely and trust their results
  • Confront the hard failure modes of self-improving systems directly—reward hacking, evaluation gaming, and reward-signal scaling—and build research programs to detect and mitigate them
  • Partner deeply with silicon, architecture, compiler, and engineering-productivity teams to embed research into real AMD design and development flows
  • Set and track measurable goals for the program—verified performance gains, cycle-time reduction, and the rate at which improvements feed back into the loop
  • Drive AMD's broader move toward AI-native engineering, helping rearchitect how internal teams build hardware and software around AI in the loop
  • Represent the RSI research agenda to executive leadership; communicate progress, risks, and roadmap implications to both technical and business audiences
  • Stay at the frontier of RL and AI-for-systems research and translate emerging techniques into internal opportunity

Qualifications

  • PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Machine Learning, or a related field, or equivalent research experience and demonstrated impact
  • Demonstrated technical leadership in AI/ML research, with a track record of impactful published work and/or research shipped into production systems
  • Deep, current expertise in reinforcement learning, including reward modeling, training pipelines, and the practical failure modes of RL at scale
  • Hands-on understanding of AI-for-systems problems—code generation, compiler/kernel optimization, design-space exploration, or hardware/software co-design
  • Experience building coding RL loops
  • Experience leading research teams and setting technical direction across multiple concurrent programs
  • Ability to remain hands-on with training pipelines, kernels, or research prototyping while leading a team
  • Strong cross-functional collaboration skills, with a track record of embedding research into engineering organizations
  • Track record of attracting, hiring, and developing top AI research talent

Skills

Required:Reinforcement learningAI-for-systemsLeadership of research teams

Benefits

  • AMD benefits at a glance (as described in the job post)
Last updated Oct 22, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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