Lead Research Engineer

What We're Looking For

We are seeking a highly skilled Lead Research Engineer to lead optimization efforts for training and inference workloads running on Lightning AI infrastructure. This role sits at the intersection of ML systems, AI infrastructure, performance engineering, and practical research. You’ll drive improvements across models, inference systems, and platform infrastructure to improve performance, scalability, and reliability for real‑world AI workloads.

This is a highly cross‑functional role that combines deep technical leadership with hands‑on implementation. Successful candidates are comfortable operating broadly across the stack — from model behavior and inference systems to distributed infrastructure and developer tooling — while partnering closely with customers and internal engineering teams to solve complex AI systems challenges at scale.

This role is based in one of our hubs (NYC, SF, London, or Seattle — NYC and London are ...