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Senior/Staff Software Engineer, ML Training Optimization

Zoox· Software – Software Systems
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Hybrid (Foster City, CA / Seattle, WA)$254k - $350kFull-timePosted 5d ago

About the role

Role focused on ML training optimization for large-scaleFoundation models, VLMs, and VLAs to accelerate autonomous driving training. Lead technical direction for distributed training, parallelism, mixed-precision, and RL on accelerators; mentor engineers and shape the team’s roadmap.

Responsibilities

  • Lead the design, implementation, and operation of training performance optimizations (data/tensor/pipeline parallelism, mixed precision, gradient checkpointing, GPU kernels) to scale VLM, VLA, and Foundation model training.
  • Own the technical strategy and multi-quarter roadmap for RL framework and RL performance optimization for driving foundation models.
  • Drive profiling and root-cause analysis of throughput bottlenecks across the compute, compiler, framework, and cluster-networking stack.
  • Partner with ML researchers, data engineers, and hardware engineers to define requirements and make architectural decisions for large-scale training infrastructure.
  • Build custom kernels and benchmarks that track and validate performance gains across the stack.
  • Mentor engineers and raise the team’s technical bar through design reviews and best practices.

Qualifications

  • 7+ years of total experience, including 4+ years on large-scale model training platforms, with a record of leading projects end to end.
  • Deep experience with distributed training frameworks (Megatron-LM, TorchTitan) and efficiently utilizing GPU/accelerator clusters at scale.
  • Experience with RL frameworks (Verl/MILES) and algorithms (GRPO, PPO).
  • Experience with collective communication libraries (e.g., NCCL) and optimizing communication/compute overlap in multi-node training.
  • Strong command of profiling tools (NVIDIA Nsight, PyTorch Profiler, or XLA/JAX profiling) to find and resolve training bottlenecks.
  • Proficiency in Python or C++.
  • Experience with ML compilers, performance tooling, or hardware/software co-design (GPU/TPU/accelerator architectures).
  • Ability to influence across teams and communicate technical tradeoffs to both researchers and engineers.

Skills

Required:Distributed training frameworksRL frameworks and algorithmsGPU/accelerator clustersProfiling and performance optimizationPython or C++
Last updated Oct 21, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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