Software Engineer, Metal Runtime (Core Systems)

As a Software Engineer on the Metal Runtime team at Tenstorrent, you’ll work on the low-level software that powers our AI accelerators. You’ll build and optimize high-performance runtime systems that execute directly on the hardware, focusing on scheduling, memory movement, and efficient execution across massively parallel processors. We believe runtime systems are a core part of performance: they determine how hardware resources are utilized, how data flows through the system, and how efficiently workloads are executed at scale.

If you enjoy pushing performance, working close to the metal, and solving complex systems challenges at the hardware/software boundary, this is your kind of role.

This role is hybrid, based out of Santa Clara, CA; Austin, TX; Toronto, ON.

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 coder in C or C++, and love working close to hardware.
• Comfortable thinking in terms of threads, processors, and memory movement, and experienced writing fast, parallel code across multiple processors.
• Enjoy optimizing execution, scheduling, and memory systems for performance at scale.
• Comfortable debugging at the hardware/software boundary and reasoning about system behavior end-to-end.
• Curious about how runtimes and bare-metal software come together to power AI.
• Collaborative by nature and enjoy solving tough problems with smart people.

 

What We Need

• Build and optimize the Metal runtime that executes directly on our AI accelerators.
• Develop bare-metal systems that manage compute execution, scheduling, and resource utilization.
• Optimize memory movement and data flow across massively parallel hardware.
• Work closely with hardware teams to maximize performance and efficiency of our architecture.
• Debug, analyze, and tune runtime behavior across complex, distributed systems.

 

What You Will Learn

• How to design high-performance runtime systems for cutting-edge AI hardware.
• How execution, scheduling, and memory systems interact at scale.
• How to make custom ASICs and co-processors work efficiently across the chip.
• Best practices for debugging complex, performance-critical software.
• How software and hardware co-evolve in a fast-paced AI startup.

 

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.