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Director, Frontier AI Research & Partnerships

AMD· Engineering
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Santa Clara, CA$246.4k - $369.6kFull-timePosted 2mo ago

About the role

Senior leadership role leading AMD's frontier AI research collaborations with labs and external partners, directing technical strategy across reinforcement learning, frontier model training, and AMD hardware/software roadmap; builds and mentors a research team and translates frontier-model requirements into hardware and software initiatives.

Responsibilities

  • Define and own the AI research strategy for AMD's strategic lab partnerships, aligning joint technical roadmaps with AMD's hardware and software priorities
  • Build, lead, and mentor a high-caliber team of AI researchers and research engineers; set research direction, hiring bar, and standards for technical excellence
  • Serve as AMD's senior research counterpart to partner labs—earning credibility as a peer on reinforcement learning, model training, and large-scale systems
  • Drive joint research programs spanning RL training pipelines (e.g., async RL, importance sampling, reward modeling), GPU programming, kernel and PPA optimization, and frontier model performance on AMD platforms
  • Translate frontier-model requirements into concrete, prioritized input to AMD's hardware roadmap and software stack, partnering closely with silicon, architecture, and compiler teams
  • Establish IP-preserving collaboration architectures (e.g., confidential compute) that let AMD and partners co-develop while protecting each party's intellectual property
  • Set and track measurable goals for each partnership—model uplift, kernel and workload performance, and verifiable research milestones
  • Represent AMD's research agenda to executive leadership and external partners; communicate results, trade-offs, and roadmap implications to both technical and business audiences
  • Stay at the frontier of AI research and translate emerging techniques into opportunities for AMD and its partners

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 or frontier models
  • Deep, current expertise in reinforcement learning, large-scale model training, GPU programming, and AI systems/performance optimization
  • Experience leading research teams and setting technical direction across multiple concurrent programs
  • Experience working with or inside frontier AI labs, or leading external research partnerships, with credibility to operate as a scientific peer
  • Strong understanding of the hardware–software stack underpinning large-model training and inference, and how architectural decisions affect model performance
  • Ability to remain hands-on with training pipelines, kernels, or research prototyping while leading a team
  • Excellent communication skills, with the ability to influence executives, partners, and engineers across organizational and company boundaries
  • Track record of attracting, hiring, and developing top AI research talent

Skills

Required:AI research leadershipReinforcement learningLarge-scale model trainingGPU programming

Benefits

  • Benefits offered are described: AMD benefits at a glance.
Last updated Oct 15, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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