NVIDIA

Distinguished Engineer – High Performance AI

US, CA, Santa Clara Full time

NVIDIA has been transforming computer graphics, PC gaming, and accelerated computing for more than 25 years. It’s a unique legacy of innovation that’s fueled by great technology—and amazing people. Today, we’re tapping into the unlimited potential of AI to define the next era of computing. An era in which our GPU acts as the brains of computers, robots, and self-driving cars that can understand the world. Doing what’s never been done before takes vision, innovation, and the world’s best talent. As an NVIDIAN, you’ll be immersed in a diverse, supportive environment where everyone is inspired to do their best work. Come join the team and see how you can make a lasting impact on the world.

We are looking for an outstanding Distinguished Engineer – High Performance AI to build groundbreaking agentic AI systems for the CUDA ecosystem. We build full-stack agentic AI platforms—spanning multi-agent runtimes and orchestration, data and evaluation pipelines, training and inference stacks, and GPU-accelerated execution—deeply integrated with NVIDIA’s software and hardware stack to advance accelerated computing end-to-end. As a leader on the team, you will define technical direction and drive execution across the stack, including building advanced multi-agent systems, scalable training (including multi-agent RL) and inference, hardware/software co-design, and production-grade engineering solutions that improve agent planning, reasoning, tool-use, code generation, and end-to-end engineering workflows. You will collaborate closely with internal NVIDIA software and hardware teams to translate the latest advances into production capabilities and NVIDIA products.

What you'll be doing:

  • Set strategy and lead execution for agentic AI systems for the CUDA ecosystem, defining roadmaps and measurable success metrics (performance, quality, reliability, developer productivity)..

  • Co-design agentic system solutions with software, hardware and algorithm teams; influence and adopt new capabilities as they become available.

  • Develop reproducible, high-fidelity evaluation frameworks covering performance, quality and developer productivity.

  • Collaborate across the AI stack and help drive architecture and key technical decisions —from hardware through compilers/toolchains, kernels/libraries, frameworks, distributed training, and inference/serving—and with model and research/engineering teams.

  • Scale impact through leadership: mentor and grow senior technical talent.

What we need to see:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field (or equivalent experience); MS or PhD preferred.

  • 17+ years industry and/or academia experience with AI systems development; strong exposure to building foundational models, agents or orchestration frameworks; hands-on experience with deep learning frameworks and modern inference stacks.

  • Strong C/C++ and Python programming skills; solid software engineering fundamentals; ability to set engineering standards and review architecture at scale.

  • Experience with GPU programming and performance optimization (CUDA or equivalent).

  • Proven track record leading large, cross-team efforts from concept through production, including navigating ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and delivering measurable outcomes.

Ways To Stand Out From The Crowd:

  • Track record building/evaluating deep learning models, coding agents and developer tooling, and driving broad adoption across teams or customers.

  • Demonstrated ability to optimize and deploy high-performance models, including on resource-constrained platforms. Deep expertise in GPU performance optimizations, evidenced by benchmark wins or published results.

  • Publications or open-source leadership in deep learning, multi-agent systems, reinforcement learning, or AI systems; contributions to widely used repos or standards.

  • Experience leading projects end-to-end, mentoring small teams; ability to drive concepts to production.

  • Recognized technical leadership (e.g., setting platform direction, creating widely used architectures/APIs, or establishing evaluation/benchmarking standards).

With competitive salaries and a generous benefits package, we are widely considered to be one of the technology world’s most desirable employers. We have some of the most forward-thinking and hardworking people in the world working for us and, due to unprecedented growth, our exclusive engineering teams are rapidly growing. If you're a creative and autonomous engineer with a real passion for technology, we want to hear from you.

Your base salary will be determined based on your location, experience, and the pay of employees in similar positions. The base salary range is 320,000 USD - 488,750 USD.

You will also be eligible for equity and benefits.

Applications for this job will be accepted at least until January 19, 2026.

This posting is for an existing vacancy. 

NVIDIA uses AI tools in its recruiting processes.

NVIDIA is committed to fostering a diverse work environment and proud to be an equal opportunity employer. As we highly value diversity in our current and future employees, we do not discriminate (including in our hiring and promotion practices) on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, disability status or any other characteristic protected by law.