Staff Software Engineer, AI Foundation Model
Merlin Labs2 months ago
Base Salary
$225k - $390k/yr
Responsibilities
- Strategize foundation-model selection and refactor, design, build, and maintain core AI models and training and inference infrastructure.
- Build and operate distributed training pipelines, experiment-tracking systems, and model registries.
- Define model-evaluation, benchmarking, and regression-testing standards for safety and performance before deployment.
- Architect and own flight-data pipelines for ingesting, processing, labeling, and versioning data used by autonomy and AI teams.
- Identify technical bottlenecks and collaborate with AI Infrastructure, Simulation, and Flight Software teams on shared interfaces and abstractions.
- Mentor and technically guide junior and mid-level engineers, conduct design reviews, and contribute to hiring and technical interviews.
- Lead technical scoping and estimation for large AI foundation-model projects.
- Evaluate and adopt open-source tooling, document architecture and operational runbooks, and contribute to open-source projects when appropriate.
Requirements
- 8+ years of software engineering experience, with substantial experience in state-of-the-art or next-generation AI model development, ML infrastructure, MLOps, data engineering, or AI platform development.
- Experience developing AI-first autonomy software involving perception, behavior planning, prediction, and actuation based on Transformer architectures.
- Ability to independently design and deliver large-scale production systems from architecture through deployment and operation.
- Deep proficiency in PyTorch and TensorFlow, plus at least one systems language such as C++, C, Rust, or Go.
- Hands-on experience with distributed training frameworks, Python extensions, JAX, or equivalent, and the infrastructure required to operate them reliably at scale.
- Experience onboarding trained models into edge environments with high-performance compute system-on-chips.
- Strong background in streaming and batch data pipelines, data versioning, and high-volume heterogeneous sensor data.
- Experience building model evaluation and validation frameworks with MLOps frameworks such as Weights and Biases or MLflow.
- Track record of influencing technical direction across teams and driving alignment on shared infrastructure and standards.
- Excellent written communication and ability to produce clear design documents and architecture proposals.
- Nice-to-have experience includes aerospace, automotive autonomy, robotics, safety-critical real-time systems, NVIDIA Thor or Orin, simulation infrastructure, synthetic data, domain randomization, NVIDIA Cosmos, model quantization, TensorRT, hardware-aware compilation, embedded accelerators, open-source ML or data-engineering contributions, flight-data formats, ARINC 429, MIL-STD-1553, cameras, LiDAR, radar, and IMU.
Benefits
- On-site position at Merlin headquarters in Boston, Massachusetts.
- Catered lunches, snacks, and beverages including coffee and tea.
- Health, dental, and life insurance, unlimited vacation, and a 401(k) with match.
- Professional development support in an entrepreneurial, team-focused startup environment.
H1B sponsorship
No H1B sponsorship
At this time, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship or consider candidates who require visa transfers
Merlin Labs’s past filings provide context. They do not guarantee sponsorship for a current opening.
Verified yearly history is not available for this company.
Job fields receiving H1B certifications
A job-field breakdown is not available for this company.
Source: US Department of Labor