Staff Ml Engineer

Role: Staff ML Engineer

Location: San Jose, CA, USA

Department: ML

AI-enhanced security processor company redefining the control and management of every digital system.

The company builds silicon-rooted security and management chips - including the TCU (Trusted Control/Compute Unit) - for AI data center infrastructure, combining platform security, BMC/firmware, and on-chip AI for real-time threat detection and dynamic power/thermal management.

About the role

We're looking for an ML engineer who works across the full stack from model to silicon - comfortable optimizing training and inference performance on GPU/AI-accelerator infrastructure, building or tuning models, and adapting model and inference-engine design to the constraints of the underlying chip and its NPU. You'll move fluidly between algorithm work, systems-level software, and infrastructure work, closing the loop end-to-end rather than owning just one layer of the stack. This is a rare chance to work the full cycle of AI silicon, from model down to chip - something most ML engineers at large companies never get access to.

What you'll do

Optimize training and inference performance across GPU and AI-accelerator infrastructure, including MLOps pipelines

Design, train, and evaluate ML models (deep learning, LLM, CV, or recommendation systems) and take them into production

Harden and extend NPU cores (e.g. building on an open RVV/tensor core like CoralNPU) into production silicon

Build or optimize inference engines and serving runtimes against real hardware constraints - latency, memory, and power

Work below the application layer where needed - BMC firmware, embedded Linux, or RTOS (e.g. Zephyr) - so AI features run reliably on real systems

Build automated test/verification harnesses that close the loop for AI-assisted RTL/DV, hardware bring-up, or manufacturing test

Apply ML to security - AI-driven log/intrusion analysis, AI-assisted penetration testing, or firmware/hardware security work

Collaborate closely with RTL/hardware, firmware, and QA teams to ship AI features end-to-end, from training through deployment and monitoring

Qualifications What we're looking for

5 7+ years of hands-on AI/ML experience; Master's required, PhD preferred

Hands-on experience with AI/ML infrastructure and performance - GPU clusters, distributed training, inference-serving optimization, MLOps pipelines

Model / algorithm development experience - designing, training, and evaluating ML models

Experience taking models into production - feature engineering, data pipelines, deployment

AI chip / hardware-aware ML experience - optimizing inference engines for a specific chip, or adapting model architecture/quantization to chip constraints

Deep, hands-on expertise in at least 2 of the following 5 specialty areas - we don't expect all five:

NPU / AI-accelerator - hardening or extending an NPU core into production silicon, mapping models onto MAC/tensor-engine constraints, or NPU-aware RTL/DV work

Systems / Sys-level software - BMC firmware, embedded Linux, RTOS (e.g. Zephyr), or other low-level system software

Inference engine / runtime - built or materially optimized an inference engine or serving runtime against real hardware constraints

Test / verification harness - built an automated harness that closes a loop, e.g. an agent-driven RTL/DV test runner or a hardware bring-up / MFG test harness

Cyber security - AI-driven log/intrusion analysis, AI-assisted penetration testing, or firmware/hardware security