{"id":58068,"url":"https://alion.io/job/figure-ai-helix-ai-engineer-training-performance","title":"Helix AI Engineer, Training Performance","company":{"id":25,"name":"Figure AI","domain":"figure.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/figure-ai","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":85,"open_postings":94,"ghost_share":0.17,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0.011,"time_to_fill_p50_days":179,"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":"middle","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Jose, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":200000,"max":400000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":400000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"AI Agents","optional":false},{"name":"AWS Trainium","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"CUDA","optional":false},{"name":"CUDA Toolkit","optional":false},{"name":"DeepSpeed","optional":false},{"name":"FSDP","optional":false},{"name":"InfiniBand","optional":false},{"name":"JAX","optional":false},{"name":"Megatron-LM","optional":false},{"name":"NCCL","optional":false},{"name":"NVLink","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch C++","optional":false},{"name":"TPU","optional":false},{"name":"Triton","optional":false},{"name":"vLLM","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-14T04:53:35Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-08","last_verified_at":"2026-10-19T01:15:15Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":65,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":65},"description":"Figure is an AI robotics company developing autonomous general-purpose humanoid robots. The goal of the company is to ship humanoid robots with human level intelligence. Its robots are engineered to perform a variety of tasks in the home and commercial markets. Figure is headquartered in San Jose, CA.\nFigure's vision is to deploy autonomous humanoids at a global scale. Our Helix team is looking for an experienced AI Training Performance Engineer to take our model training to the next level. This role is focused on improving distributed training frameworks for large scale model training, optimizing GPU kernels, exploring the relative gains of different accelerator types and co-designing our models to maximize utilization of our hardware.\nResponsibilities:\nOptimize training performance for a 100B+ parameter models across 100k+ GPUs.\n\nCollaborate with the broader team on accelerator choice, cluster topology, scheduling, and hardware procurement decisions to inform future scaling.\n\nWrite and optimize custom kernels (Triton/CUDA).\n\nBuild tooling and dashboards for continuous performance monitoring, regression detection, and root-cause analysis across training jobs.\n\nOptimize data loading and preprocessing pipelines so I/O never gates the accelerators.\n\nImprove checkpointing, fault tolerance, and elastic restart so large jobs recover quickly from node failures without losing significant wall-clock time.\n\nPartner with researchers to co-design model architectures and training recipes that are performant at scale (e.g., activation checkpointing strategies, mixed precision, sequence packing).\n\nExtend and contribute to kernel compilers (e.g., Triton, Gluon) to improve iteration speed and enable targeting of custom/non-NVIDIA accelerators.\n\nBuild and extend agentic systems that automatically generate, benchmark, and iterate on custom kernels.\n\nEvaluate emerging accelerator architectures (AMD, TPU, SRAM-based ASICs, and other novel hardware) for fit with our training workloads, and lead proof-of-concept ports/benchmarks.\n\nExplore different model/data parallelisms (FSDP, context parallel, expert parallel, etc.) to determine optimal configuration per model size.\n\nRequirements:\nBachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer/Electrical Engineering, or a related field.\n\n3+ years in AI performance engineering, with significant time leading large-scale performance improvement projects.\n\nDeep understanding of GPU architecture and performance characteristics (memory bandwidth, compute-bound vs. memory-bound ops, occupancy).\n\nProficiency with profiling tools (Nsight Systems/Compute, PyTorch Profiler, HTA, or similar) and ability to translate traces into concrete optimizations.\n\nSolid grasp of collective communication (NCCL) and modern networking concepts (RDMA, NVLink, InfiniBand/RoCE, topology-aware placement).\n\nStrong Python and CUDA/C++ skills; comfortable reading and modifying framework internals.\n\nExperience debugging performance regressions and instability at scale (stragglers, hangs, OOMs, numerical divergence).\n\nExperience defining and reasoning about hardware-efficiency metrics (MFU/HFU) and using them to drive optimization priorities.\n\nBonus Qualifications:\nExperience with heterogeneous or multi-datacenter training setups and cross-cluster orchestration.\n\nContributions to open-source ML systems projects (PyTorch, Megatron-LM, vLLM, DeepSpeed, JAX, etc.).\n\nExposure to non-NVIDIA accelerators (AMD GPUs, TPU/Trainium/Inferentia, or custom silicon) and heterogeneous fleet management.\n\nThe US base salary range for this full-time position is $200,000 to $400,000 per year.\nThe pay offered for this position may vary based on several individual factors, including job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. The total compensation package may also include additional components/benefits depending on the specific role. This information will be shared if an employment offer is extended.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3948,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":3,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":[],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Robotics AI","Humanoid Robots","Multimodal AI"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-14T04:53:35Z"}],"visa":[{"country":"US","licensed_sponsor":true,"evidence":"H-1B filings in 12 months: 23","filings_12m":23,"filings_prev_12m":23,"green_card_filings_12m":0,"median_offered_wage_usd":227500,"route":null,"cap_exempt":false,"checked_at":"2026-10-15T11:24:14+00:00","sources":["US Department of Labor: LCA disclosure data (H-1B, H-1B1, E-3)"],"filings_for_role_12m":6}],"liveness":{"score":62,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.859,"p_room":0.72,"age_days":64,"expected_fill_days":179,"reasons":["conf:2","velocity","win:mid","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-17T05:46:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":400000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/figure-ai-helix-ai-engineer-training-performance","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/figure-ai-helix-ai-engineer-training-performance.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-19T03:23:32Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":1903,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-20T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":25},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=25"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Ffigure-ai-helix-ai-engineer-training-performance"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Ffigure-ai-helix-ai-engineer-training-performance"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Ffigure-ai-helix-ai-engineer-training-performance"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/figure-ai-helix-ai-engineer-training-performance\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Ffigure-ai-helix-ai-engineer-training-performance"}]}