# AI Performance Engineer at Modular

- Company: Modular
- What the company does: The unified AI inference stack - from custom GPU kernels to production cloud serving on NVIDIA and AMD. 2x performance. Top open models. Open source stack. Backed by General Catalyst, Greylock and GV.
- Company website: https://www.modular.com/
- Type: Startups (AI role)
- Level: Mid level
- Location: Remote
- Work setup: Remote
- Posted: 2026-10-08
- Apply by: 2026-11-22
- Apply: https://jobs.gem.com/modular/am9icG9zdDq3flYE-LztfB10bEJWwgDi?utm_source=1752vc&utm_medium=careers
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/modular-ai-performance-engineer/

## About the role

We are looking for an AI Performance Engineer to join the ASIC Performance team. You will design, implement, and tune high-performance attention kernels—and a broader set of foundational AI kernels—for new accelerator architectures. Found on 1752vc Careers, the job board for startup and VC roles.

## What they're looking for

- 5+ years of relevant industry or research experience in high-performance computing, AI kernel development, accelerator programming, compiler engineering, or a closely related field
- Strong knowledge of modern attention algorithms and their implementation tradeoffs, including the distinct performance characteristics of prefill and decode
- Strong understanding of architectures beyond conventional GPUs—such as NPUs, DSPs, TPUs, or custom ASICs—and the ability to reason about unfamiliar compute units, memory hierarchies, and execution models
- Experience with at least one heterogeneous programming model or kernel ecosystem such as CUDA, Triton, SYCL, OpenCL, HIP, or a vendor accelerator SDK
- Strong performance-analysis skills and proficiency with relevant profiling, tracing, benchmarking, and debugging tools
- Ability to read architecture manuals, compiler output, and low-level generated code, form hypotheses from data, and systematically close performance gaps


Source: 1752vc Careers, https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/modular-ai-performance-engineer/