Compiler Engineer

Who We Are

Lightning AI is the company reimagining the way AI is built. After creating and releasing PyTorch Lightning in 2019, Lightning AI was launched to reshape the development of artificial intelligence products for commercial and academic use.

Focusing on simplicity, sustainability, modularity, and extensibility, Lightning AI streamlines the lifecycle of machine learning development to expand widespread AI adoption. Its aim is to enable individual and enterprise users to build deployment-ready AI tools without having to hire experts or sink resources into in-house infrastructure.

Lightning AI is a company with offices in New York City, Palo Alto, and London backed by $58.6 million in funding from Coatue, Index Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, and Firstminute.

Our Values

We are building a company of people that care deeply about the impact of AI on our society. We value:

• Integrity: AI is bound to change how we interact with computers, with each other, and the world—for the better. We are committed to building an inclusive company and developing ethical AI that improves humanity.
• Perseverance: Be bold, take the initiative, and make decisions with confidence. We empower our community, clients, and colleagues to tackle the impossible.
• Curiosity: We are genuinely interested in finding solutions to advance the state of AI research and foster its application in novel products. It's not about whether we can solve the problem, but how.

We also feel that it’s essential to point out the self-evident here – there’s a genuine lack of diversity in our industry, which has to change. One of our goals is to help drive that change. Lightning AI is fully committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of its practices, especially when it comes to growing our team. Our culture promotes inclusion, and we embrace how rewarding it is to work with people from all walks of life. What we're looking for

We are looking for a software engineer to work directly on the Lightning Thunder compiler and the rest of the PyTorch Lightning stack. This is an opportunity to create groundbreaking technology that will transform the machine learning ecosystem.

What you’ll do

• Develop the Thunder compiler, an open-source project developed in collaboration with NVIDIA, using your deep experience in PyTorch, JAX, or other deep learning frameworks
• Engage in performance-oriented model optimizations, around distributed training as well as inference
• Develop optimized kernels in CUDA or Triton to target specific use-cases
• Integrate Thunder throughout the PyTorch Lightning ecosystem
• Engage with the community and champion its growth
• Support the adoption of Thunder across the industry
• Work closely within the Lightning team as a strategic partner

How we evaluate your candidacy

Our interviews will not only give us insight into your skillset but give you insight into our company.

• Introduction: You will speak with our Recruiter about your background and what you are looking for in your next role. They will share some information with you about our team and the projects you will be involved in. If both parties decide that there is a match, we will proceed with a technical interview.
• Coding: Our second interview will be a coding interview with our CTO.
• Virtual Onsite: These interviews will cover your domain expertise, systems architecture and Culture.
• Offer: We determine your level based on your interview performance and make an offer based on geo-located salary bands updated on a monthly basis using Carta's Total Compensation tool.
• Compensation: $120,000 - $250,000 (depending on leveling)

Benefits and Perks

We champion equal pay for work of equal or comparable value based on the level of skill, effort, responsibility, and impact of any given role. We use Carta's Total Compensation tool to enable data-driven decision-making around benchmarks, levels, and planning. We are confident that our compensation practices are equitable, explainable, fair, and competitive, and in the spirit of transparency, we provide a compensation bands for each open role.

We offer competitive base salaries and stock options with a 25% one year cliff and monthly vesting thereafter. For our international employees, we work with Velocity Global to pay you in your local currency and provide equitable benefits across the globe.

In the US, we offer:

• 90% monthly premium contributions towards medical and 100% monthly premium contributions towards select dental and vision plans for you and your dependents
• Life and AD&D insurance 
• Flexible paid time off plus 1 week of winter closure
• Generous paid family leave benefits
• $500 monthly meal reimbursement, including groceries & food delivery services
• $1,000 home office stipend
• $1,000 annual learning & development stipend 
• 100% Citibike membership (NYC only)
• $45/month gym membership 
• Additional various medical and mental health services