Principal AI Performance Engineer - LLM Inference (sglang)

AMD AMD · Semiconductors · Helsinki, Finland · Engineering

Principal AI Performance Engineer focused on optimizing LLM inference performance on AMD GPUs using the SGLang serving framework. The role involves deep technical analysis of kernel and system-level bottlenecks, leading customer engagements, and integrating custom kernels. It requires expertise in GPU performance characteristics, distributed systems, and leveraging AI agents for workflow acceleration.

What you'd actually do

  1. Drive performance optimization end-to-end on SGLang across leading models and customer-relevant serving configurations, closing competitive gaps through kernel and systems-level optimizations
  2. Profile, diagnose, and resolve the hardest cross-stack performance bottlenecks in SGLang deployments, from GPU kernels and operator dispatch to the SGLang scheduler, RadixAttention/prefix caching, and multi-node communication
  3. Diagnose kernel-level performance issues using profiling tools: identify occupancy limitations, L2 cache thrashing, register pressure, memory coalescing issues, and translate findings into actionable optimizations
  4. Lead customer-facing technical engagements: present findings, recommend optimizations, and deliver measurable performance uplifts on SGLang
  5. Integrate and optimize custom kernels (Triton, Gluon, CK, PyDSL, ASM, AITER) within SGLang, understanding dispatch paths, shape extraction, and backend selection

Skills

Required

  • Deep hands-on experience with SGLang internals
  • Strong background in end-to-end workload profiling and bottleneck diagnosis
  • Understanding of GPU kernel performance characteristics
  • Ability to read and reason about kernel-level profiling data and translate it into concrete optimization actions
  • Understanding of model architectures (transformers, MoE, diffusion), inference paradigms (speculative decoding, prefill-decode disaggregation, continuous batching), and how they map to hardware and to SGLang's execution model
  • Experience with custom kernel development or integration (HIP, CUDA, Triton, CK, or similar)
  • Understanding of multi-GPU and multi-node distributed systems
  • System and rack-level design awareness
  • Strong proficiency in Python and C++
  • Customer-facing technical leadership experience
  • Fluent in AI-assisted development
  • Strong Linux systems knowledge
  • Excellent written and verbal English communication skills

Nice to have

  • familiarity with vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, or similar is a plus

What the JD emphasized

  • performance-obsessed
  • drive AI inference performance to the absolute limit
  • SGLang as the primary serving framework
  • work end-to-end across the stack
  • tackling the hardest performance problems
  • every engagement is different
  • every optimization leaves a lasting impact
  • understand it top to bottom
  • make it faster on SGLang
  • know the framework's internals intimately
  • RadixAttention and prefix caching
  • the scheduler and continuous batching loop
  • the SGLang runtime and its interaction with the AMD backend
  • paths that connect a user request down to the GPU kernel
  • equally comfortable profiling a distributed SGLang deployment
  • diagnosing a kernel-level bottleneck
  • presenting optimization results to a customer's VP of Engineering
  • understand GPU kernel performance deeply
  • reason about occupancy, cache behavior, memory coalescing, and instruction-level bottlenecks from first principles
  • lead through technical depth
  • set the standard for your team by doing the hardest work yourself
  • pulling others up along the way
  • leverage AI agents and tools daily to accelerate your workflows
  • actively define new ways of using them to make yourself and your team more effective
  • thrive under pressure
  • move fast
  • measure everything
  • closing competitive gaps
  • resolve the hardest cross-stack performance bottlenecks
  • custom kernels
  • multi-node distributed inference
  • shared performance optimization methodology
  • AI-assisted performance engineering
  • Upstream optimizations into SGLang and adjacent open-source frameworks such as vLLM and PyTorch

Other signals

  • LLM Inference Performance Optimization
  • SGLang Serving Framework
  • AMD GPU Optimization
  • Kernel-level Performance Diagnosis
  • Customer-facing Technical Leadership