Low-Level Software Engineer, LLK
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 12, 2026. First seen by Alion on Oct 7, 2026. Tenstorrent scores A on the Alion truth index.
Tenstorrent is leading the industry on cutting-edge AI technology, revolutionizing performance expectations, ease of use, and cost efficiency. With AI redefining the computing paradigm, solutions must evolve to unify innovations in software models, compilers, platforms, networking, and semiconductors. Our diverse team of technologists have developed a high performance RISC-V CPU from scratch, and share a passion for AI and a deep desire to build the best AI platform possible. We value collaboration, curiosity, and a commitment to solving hard problems. We are growing our team and looking for contributors of all seniorities.
As a Low-Level Software Engineer on Tenstorrent’s Low-Level Kernel (LLK) team, you’ll work at the intersection of software and AI hardware to build the primitives that power our workloads.
LLKs sit directly on top of the ISA of Tenstorrent’s AI hardware and form the foundation for the software stack above them. You’ll tackle challenging problems in low-level programming, hardware-aware optimization, and performance engineering, with the opportunity to influence how our hardware is programmed and how efficiently AI workloads run. Improvements at this layer can have an outsized impact across the entire stack.
You’ll take ownership of complex technical problems from design through implementation and optimization, while working closely with engineers across LLK, hardware, runtime, and operations.
This role is hybrid, based out of Toronto, Canada.
We welcome candidates at various experience levels for this role. During the interview process, candidates will be assessed for the appropriate level, and offers will align with that level, which may differ from the one in this posting.
Who You Are
- Strong C/C++ engineer with significant experience building low-level, performance-critical software.
- Deep understanding of computer architecture and how software maps to hardware.
- Strong problem solver who can investigate complex performance and systems challenges and drive them to resolution.
- Comfortable working close to the hardware and making informed tradeoffs between performance, correctness, and maintainability.
- Effective technical collaborator who can work across software and hardware teams and influence technical decisions
What We Need
- Design and implement low-level kernels and software primitives that expose the capabilities of Tenstorrent AI hardware.
- Own complex performance optimization efforts, from profiling and identifying bottlenecks through implementation and validation.
- Develop software that enables efficient model bring-up and execution across Tenstorrent hardware.
- Partner with LLK subteams across performance, tools, compute, and architecture bring-up, as well as hardware and runtime teams.
- Drive improvements to the quality, performance, and capabilities of the low-level software stack.
What You Will Learn
- How to program and optimize software for custom AI hardware at the lowest levels of the stack.
- How hardware architecture, instruction sets, and low-level kernels come together to enable AI workloads.
- Advanced approaches to performance analysis, hardware-aware optimization, and debugging.
- How low-level software decisions influence performance across the broader AI software stack.
- How to solve complex problems spanning hardware, kernels, runtime, and higher-level software.
Compensation for all engineers at Tenstorrent ranges from $100k - $500k including base and variable compensation targets. Experience, skills, education, background and location all impact the actual offer made.
Tenstorrent offers a highly competitive compensation package and benefits, and we are an equal opportunity employer.
This offer of employment is contingent upon the applicant being eligible to access U.S. export-controlled technology. Due to U.S. export laws, including those codified in the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR), the Company is required to ensure compliance with these laws when transferring technology to nationals of certain countries (such as EAR Country Groups D:1, E1, and E2). These requirements apply to persons located in the U.S. and all countries outside the U.S. As the position offered will have direct and/or indirect access to information, systems, or technologies subject to these laws, the offer may be contingent upon your citizenship/permanent residency status or ability to obtain prior license approval from the U.S. Commerce Department or applicable federal agency. If employment is not possible due to U.S. export laws, any offer of employment will be rescinded.