{"id":462971,"url":"https://alion.io/job/thunder-compute-software-engineer-c-systems","title":"Software Engineer (C++ Systems)","company":{"id":178296,"name":"Thunder Compute","domain":"thundercompute.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/thunder-compute","size_band":"11-50","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":null},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":null,"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 Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":250000,"max":325000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":325000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":true,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Anthropic","optional":false},{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"CoreWeave","optional":false},{"name":"CUDA","optional":false},{"name":"gRPC","optional":false},{"name":"Linux","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-21T19:20:00Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-07-21","last_verified_at":"2026-10-26T03:10:06Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":96,"trust":{"level":"stale","repost_count":0,"flags":["stale"],"days_open":95},"description":"Company\nThe world is building massive amounts of GPU capacity. Meanwhile, deployed GPUs are only 20% utilized.\nThis is because GPUs are not virtualized, while every other type of hardware is. For example CPUs and storage are allocated through virtual abstractions which efficiently manage the physical hardware, while GPUs are statically allocated on a one-to-one basis.\nThunder Compute is building this virtualization layer for GPUs. We have raised over $17.5M from Matrix Partners, Y Combinator, and leading angels from Coreweave, Microsoft, Cognition, and Anthropic.\nLeading solutions for underutilization sit at the workload layer and are therefore only able to optimize specific use cases. We believe the ideal cluster optimization solution must be invisible to developers and compatible with all workloads; hence, it must sit at the systems layer.\nWe are a team of systems researchers productionizing cutting-edge GPU virtualization research to build this general-purpose optimization layer.\nConcretely, our virtualization library abstracts GPUs across TCP networking. We use a userspace shim library, loaded through LD_PRELOAD, to intercept CUDA calls and send them over gRPC to a host server connected to a physical GPU elsewhere in the data center.\nThis enables something like “Ceph for GPUs”: GPUs become network resources that can be abstracted, pooled, and dynamically allocated across a cluster to improve utilization without requiring developers to modify their workloads.\nRole\nYour work will focus on building the core C++ systems behind our virtualization layer. This includes low-latency performance optimization, distributed systems debugging, production reliability, and research into new techniques for improving GPU utilization.\nYou will take ownership of complex systems from early experimentation through production deployment. Example projects may include:\nProfiling and reducing latency across remote CUDA operations\n\nBuilding high-performance networking and data-transfer paths\n\nDebugging failures across customer processes, our userspace runtime, the network, and remote GPU servers\n\nImproving support for process forking, signals, multithreading, dynamic linking, and unusual application behavior\n\nDesigning systems for GPU allocation, scheduling, failure recovery, and observability\n\nResearching and productionizing new GPU virtualization and oversubscription techniques\n\nExpanding compatibility across CUDA applications, frameworks, and GPU architectures\n\nYou will spend your days bouncing between the weeds of complex, performance-critical systems that are live in production. One week, you may be tracing a synchronization bug across a distributed CUDA workload; the next, you may be redesigning a hot data path to remove microseconds of overhead.\nThis work is not easy. It blends the hardest parts of systems research and production engineering.\nWe look for exceptional low-level engineering talent, strong work ethic, and extreme attention to detail. We must move quickly while shipping high-quality, reliable systems code.\nCore Technical Skills\nExceptional modern C++ ability, including memory management, concurrency, performance optimization, and systems-level abstraction design\n\nDeep understanding of operating systems, low-level networking, compilers, distributed systems, or computer architecture\n\nExperience building and operating performance-critical C++ systems in production\n\nStrong Linux systems programming and debugging ability\n\nAbility to reason through unfamiliar systems across multiple layers of the stack\n\nMust Haves\nStrong work ethic and the ability to independently push a project from an experimental prototype through 100% completion under tight deadlines\n\nAttention to detail and the ability to deliver production-ready, thoroughly tested code without significant oversight\n\nStrong ownership over correctness, reliability, performance, and operational outcomes\n\nAbility to debug ambiguous problems without a clear reproduction, existing playbook, or obvious owner\n\nWillingness to work directly with customers and investigate difficult production failures\n\nPreferred\nExperience with CUDA, GPU systems, compilers, runtime interception, dynamic linking, high-performance networking, or distributed computing\n\nExperience at a trading firm such as Citadel Securities or Jane Street; a hardware or AI infrastructure company such as NVIDIA or SambaNova; a systems research group; or a similarly demanding engineering environment\n\nStrong computer science fundamentals demonstrated through academic work, systems research, competitive programming, open-source contributions, or exceptional professional experience\n\nExperience taking new systems research from a paper or prototype into a reliable production system\n\nWhy Join\nYou will join early enough to meaningfully shape the architecture, engineering standards, and technical direction of the company.\nYou will work directly with the founders on a category-defining systems problem, with a short path between writing code and seeing it run in production. The systems you build will form the foundation of a new infrastructure layer for GPU computing.\nLogistics\nYou will report to co-founder and CTO Brian Model, formerly a Quantitative Developer at Citadel Securities\n\nThis role is full-time and in person, five days per week, at our office in downtown San Francisco\n\nRelocation support and visa sponsorship are available\n\nBenefits\n$250K - $325K base salary, up to $500K annual bonus, and 0.2% - 0.4% equity\n\nDaily lunch, snacks, and coffee\n\nTeam dinners and events\n\n401(k)\n\nHealth, dental, and vision insurance","description_format":"text","description_chars":5612,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Vision insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["Cloud Platforms (IaaS & PaaS)","AI Compute & Inference"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-09-06T11:34:18Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":8,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.227,"p_room":0.36,"age_days":95,"expected_fill_days":49,"reasons":["conf:1","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-25T05:49:26Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":325000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/thunder-compute-software-engineer-c-systems","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/thunder-compute-software-engineer-c-systems.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-26T04:58:21Z","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":6642,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-27T00:00:00Z"}},"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":178296},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=178296"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fthunder-compute-software-engineer-c-systems"},{"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%2Fthunder-compute-software-engineer-c-systems"},{"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%2Fthunder-compute-software-engineer-c-systems"},{"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/thunder-compute-software-engineer-c-systems\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fthunder-compute-software-engineer-c-systems"}]}