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photonic networking · AI inference infrastructure

Founding Engineer -- AI Inference Stack

San Francisco Bay Area$100k–$200k/yrPosted 7 days ago
InfrastructureStaff+Full Time
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The Role: We are looking for elite systems hackers who want to own the software layer of a new architecture. You will be writing kernels and orchestration logic that outperform existing solutions.

What You Will Do:

Architect the Stack: Iterate on our software layer that orchestrates inference across heterogenous cluster of compute resources.

Kernel and Compiler Optimization: Write and optimize high-performance kernels in CUDA, Triton, or custom targets to squeeze every drop of performance from the system.

The Runtime: Build the low-latency inference server, think a more performant custom version of vLLM or TensorRT-LLM, that manages KV cache at scale without the overhead of traditional PCIe bottlenecks.

Voice and Agentic Optimization: Solve the unique challenges of instant-on Voice AI, focused on latency, and the high-context demands of coding agents, focused on memory management.

Who You Are

Curiosity-driven , with a genuine passion for compute architectures and problem solving

Systems Obsessed: You have a deep understanding of computer architecture, memory hierarchies, and low-level systems programming in C++, Rust, or CUDA.

AI Fluent: You understand the guts of transformer architectures and have experience with inference frameworks like vLLM, TensorRT, ONNX, and Kubernetes.

A First-Principles Thinker: You are not afraid to throw out the standard way of doing things if it means achieving a 10x performance gain.

Why Piris Labs?

High Stakes, High Growth: We are a small, elite team of builders from Meta and Twitter, trained at Stanford, Harvard, and MIT. No middle management. No alignment meetings. Just engineering.

Venture Backed: Backed by YC W26 and tier-1 VC firms.

SF-Centric: We work in person in San Francisco. This is where the density of AI talent is, and we thrive on the high-bandwidth collaboration of a physical lab.

The Path to Full Time: This internship is a trial run for a founding-level equity stake. We are looking for people to grow with us through our Series A and beyond.

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