Research Engineer, ML Infrastructure

Deep experience building and operating distributed training systems for large models; comfortable owning infrastructure end to end from the cluster level down to the training loop

Strong systems engineering fundamentals: distributed systems, networking, storage, and the ability to reason about performance across the full hardware-software stack

Proficiency in Python and C++; experience with PyTorch or equivalent deep learning frameworks at a systems level, not just API usage

Hands-on experience with GPU performance profiling, memory optimization, and compute efficiency; able to diagnose why a training run is underperforming and fix it

Experience implementing or optimizing parallelism strategies (data, tensor, pipeline, sequence) for large model training

Track record of building tooling and abstractions that meaningfully accelerate research workflows

Strong debugging instincts across complex, distributed systems where failures are non-deterministic and hard to reproduce

Enough ML knowledge to engage substantively with researchers: understand what they are training, why the architecture choices matter, and what the infrastructure needs to support

We care more about demonstrated capability than credentials. A PhD is one signal among many.

Small, highly selective team where research and product move together; prototypes reach real deployment quickly

You'll own and operate infrastructure running across thousands of GPUs; compute is not a constraint and neither is access to the systems you need to do the work well

The environment rewards speed, autonomy, and technical depth with minimal process overhead; this is one of the most competitive and fast-moving problems in AI

Cognition is an equal opportunity employer. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law. We are committed to providing reasonable accommodations for candidates with disabilities throughout the hiring process - please let us know if you need any.