ASIC Architect, Principal (AI Inference)

We're looking for an exceptional Principal ASIC Architect to help define the future of AI inference hardware. You will collaborate across architecture, software, machine learning, systems, and silicon implementation to design next-generation AI accelerators capable of serving rapidly evolving frontier models. This role requires exceptional technical breadth, balancing mathematical understanding, ML trends, systems architecture, and practical silicon implementation. This may be the single most important technical hire after the Chief Architect.

Own architectural exploration across the evolving landscape of transformer models, MoE, sparse models, and long-context inference.

Evaluate emerging techniques including speculative decoding, continuous batching, KV-cache evolution, sub-quadratic and linear attention, and state-space models.

Assess memory architectures, communication architectures, and interconnects for next-generation accelerators.

Develop analytical models and build simulation frameworks to evaluate architectural tradeoffs.

Estimate latency, throughput, bandwidth, memory and compute utilization, scaling efficiency, power, area, and cost.

Partner closely with compiler, runtime, system software, firmware, ASIC engineering, and ML research teams to align hardware direction with real workload needs.

Develop architecture documents and define subsystem interfaces.

Evaluate tradeoffs across competing architectural directions and guide the future product roadmap.

Track new LLMs, reasoning models, research papers, hardware competitors, academic research, and emerging algorithms to keep Positron's architecture ahead of the field.

Use AI to accelerate research, performance analysis, architecture exploration, simulation generation, and documentation.

While this role is currently posted at a specific level, we are a growth-oriented organization and are open to hiring at a more senior level for the right candidate. Please note that this job description serves as a focused but generalized overview of the role; specific responsibilities and impact expectations will be tailored to the experience and seniority of the final hire.

Success in this role looks like helping define future Positron architectures and creating a scalable architectural direction that bridges software and hardware, influencing products that remain competitive for years despite rapidly evolving AI models.

Shape the core architecture of Positron's AI inference accelerators at a foundational level, with outsized influence over the company's technical direction for years to come.

Work at the intersection of frontier AI research and silicon implementation, tackling problems few architects in the industry get to own end to end.

Fully company-paid medical, dental, and vision insurance for you and your dependents

Company-paid life and disability coverage, with voluntary options to add more

Supplemental hospital, critical illness, and accident coverage available

Unlimited paid time off, so you can truly unplug and recharge

13 paid company holidays

Remote-first culture with a company-provided computer and home office setup

This position is open to candidates currently authorized to work in the U.S. We cannot provide new visa sponsorship for this role but are open to facilitating H-1B visa transfers for eligible candidates.

Equal Opportunity Employer. If you're excited about the role but don't meet every bullet, we'd still love to hear from you.

Positron AI is building next-generation AI inference accelerators designed from the ground up for low-latency, high-throughput large language model inference. Our first-generation ASIC, Asimov, is a cutting-edge accelerator targeting frontier AI workloads, with additional generations already underway.