Senior Principal Machine Learning Engineer, SambaNova Systems
$220-300k
+ Equity
Office located in San Jose, CA
Platform for artificial intelligence innovation
Posted today
Platform for artificial intelligence innovation
201-500 employees
Posted today
$220-300k
+ Equity
Office located in San Jose, CA
201-500 employees
Company mission
To accelerate the development and deployment of artificial intelligence for everyone.
Role
Who you are
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field; advanced degree (MS or PhD) strongly preferred
- 8+ years of industry experience in machine learning engineering, with a demonstrated record of technical leadership on large-scale or novel ML systems
- Deep expertise in LLM training, fine-tuning, inference optimization, and evaluation at scale
- Strong background in ML algorithms, deep learning architectures, and modern training methodologies, with the ability to critically evaluate and advance the state of the art
- Demonstrated ability to lead and align cross-functional technical efforts, mentor senior engineers, and influence organizational direction without direct management authority
- Track record of independently scoping and delivering high-complexity, high-ambiguity technical projects
What the job involves
- As a Senior Principal Machine Learning Engineer, you will be responsible for designing, developing, and optimizing machine learning models—with a focus on cutting-edge Large Language Models (LLMs)—to run efficiently on SambaNova's specialized hardware architecture, including the RDU
- This critical role bridges advanced LLM research and practical deployment, involving the development of model architectures, improving training and inference efficiency, and collaborating on hardware-software co-design with compiler, systems, and hardware teams
- The engineer will also act as the ML expert, guiding the integration of LLM solutions into production systems and customer-facing products like SambaStack and SambaCloud, with work spanning the full lifecycle from training and inference to evaluation and data curation
- Define and drive technical strategy for ML model development, training pipelines, and inference systems on SambaNova's RDU and broader hardware ecosystem
- Lead hardware-software co-design efforts in close collaboration with compiler, systems, and hardware teams—shaping architectural decisions that unlock performance at scale
- Identify, evaluate, and champion state-of-the-art ML techniques (e.g., speculative decoding, reinforcement learning, mixture-of-experts, long-context modeling) for adoption and adaptation on reconfigurable dataflow architectures
- Serve as the senior technical voice in critical design reviews, architectural decisions, and cross-functional planning—providing guidance that influences product and engineering roadmaps
- Mentor and develop principal and senior ML engineers, elevating the technical capabilities of the organization through active collaboration, design feedback, and knowledge transfer
- Partner with product and engineering leadership to translate complex ML capabilities into scalable, customer-facing solutions in SambaStack and SambaCloud
- Drive resolution of the most complex, ambiguous technical challenges—including those that span organizational boundaries or require novel approaches not yet established in the field
Our take
SambaNova Systems is a computing startup focused on building machine learning and big data analytics platforms. Its software-defined analytics platform enables optimum performance for any ML training, inference, or analytics models.
In 2021, SambaNova Systems became the best-funded AI systems and services platform startup in the world. Its total funding reached more than $1 billion and its valuation climbed to more than $5 billion. The company has received backing from the likes of BlackRock, Intel Capital, GV (formerly Google Ventures), among several others, and is expanding its offices in Palo Alto to accommodate this growth.
It's this support from premier investors in the industry that validates its mission to revolutionise the AI market by making it accessible to every organisation.
Freddie
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
-12% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Funding (last 2 of 8 rounds)
Jul 2026
$1bn
SERIES F
Feb 2026
$350m
SERIES E
Total funding: $2.5bn
Company benefits
- Flexible PTO in US
- Parental Leave
- Benefits (medical, dental and vision)
- Flexible Spending Accounts
- 401k/Pensions
- Gym Access
- Flexible Working Hours
Company HQ
Trimble Business Area, San Jose, CA
Leadership
Rodrigo Liang
(Co-Founder & CEO)They studied at Stanford before spending 7 years as a Hewlett-Packard Hardware Manager, and working as Director of Engineering at inSilicon and Afara Websystems. Having spent a combined 15 years as VP of Sun Microsystems and then Oracle Corporation, they co-founded SambaNova in November 2017.
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