Software Engineer, Distributed Systems (AI)

Location: On-site in San Francisco, CA

Annual salary: $300,000–$350,000 USD, depending on background, skills, and experience.

Company

Thinking Machines Lab builds AI systems that extend human will and judgment, including frontier model training and model-serving platforms.

What you will do

• Design and build distributed systems for compute orchestration, scheduling, storage, and networking across large GPU and TPU clusters.
• Develop fault-tolerant systems that remain correct during hardware failures, network partitions, and workload growth.
• Build distributed storage and data-orchestration layers for large volumes of training and model data.
• Improve collective communication, scheduling, and resource allocation across thousands of machines.
• Partner with research and infrastructure teams to identify bottlenecks and design solutions from first principles.
• Write production-quality code and help shape company-wide systems architecture.

Requirements

• 5+ years of experience building large-scale distributed systems.
• Proficiency in Python and Go, C++, or another systems-level language.
• Strong understanding of consensus, consistency, replication, and fault tolerance.
• Experience with network programming, load balancing, or distributed storage systems.
• Fluent English and experience operating with high autonomy in a fast-changing environment.

Nice to have

• Experience building distributed compute or orchestration systems for AI or ML workloads.
• Experience with containerization, orchestration, and distributed compute frameworks.
• Experience integrating GPUs or TPUs into distributed training or serving systems.
• Background in AI research labs, high-performance computing centers, or similarly demanding environments.
• Published work or open-source contributions related to distributed systems or performance engineering.

Culture & Benefits

• Visa sponsorship is available, with support through the visa process for suitable candidates.
• Relocation support is available as needed.
• Health, dental, and vision benefits.
• Unlimited paid time off and paid parental leave.
• Work on frontier AI training and serving infrastructure in an early-stage environment.