Compute Allocation Lead (AI)

Location: San Francisco, California; on-site

Company

Thinking Machines Lab builds frontier AI models, tools for customizing models, and interfaces that broaden human-AI communication.

What you will do

• Own compute allocation by assessing current and upcoming demand, developing plans with technical leads, and carrying decisions through execution.
• Optimize resource use across capacity, hardware suitability, workload size, timing, and dependencies.
• Investigate the gap between allocated resources and useful work, improving scheduling, workload placement, and utilization.
• Teach researchers to estimate compute needs, understand available options, and reason through allocation tradeoffs.
• Develop examples, guidance, tools, and analyses that make allocation decisions repeatable and transferable.
• Connect research planning with infrastructure capacity, compare expected and actual usage, and improve decisions over time.

Requirements

• Experience making consequential resource allocation or capacity decisions in a complex computing environment.
• Strong technical understanding of distributed systems, machine learning infrastructure, or high-performance computing.
• Experience improving useful output from limited resources and explaining technical tradeoffs.
• Ability to teach complex technical ideas through clear explanations and practical examples.
• Comfort investigating usage and performance data, challenging assumptions, and making evidence-based decisions.
• Strong judgment, collaboration, attention to detail, and follow-through when managing competing priorities.

Nice to have

• Experience owning compute allocation at an AI research lab or organization with substantial shared computing resources.
• Familiarity with GPU clusters, distributed training, scheduling, and workload placement.
• Understanding of networking, storage, reliability, and hardware differences affecting usable capacity.
• Experience building tools or analyses for capacity forecasting, allocation, or utilization.
• Experience mentoring researchers, engineers, or technical program managers in compute planning.

Culture & Benefits

• Visa sponsorship is supported, with assistance throughout the process.
• Health, dental, and vision coverage.
• Unlimited paid time off.
• Paid parental leave.
• Relocation support as needed.