Director, AI Research - CA, Santa Clara, United States
Originally posted 4 August 2026 by the employer.
Lead a research agenda at the intersection of frontier AI and AMD silicon.
About the role
AMD is looking for a Director of AI Research to set and lead a research agenda at the intersection of frontier AI and AMD silicon, seeing across reinforcement learning, model training, AI-for-systems, and the hardware and software that make large models fast. This role focuses on a high-impact program across these areas.
What you'll do
- Define and own an AI research agenda spanning reinforcement learning, model training and optimization, and AI-for-systems, aligned to AMD's strategic priorities.
- Build, lead, and mentor a team of AI researchers and research engineers; set research direction, hiring bar, and standards for technical excellence.
- Prioritize across research opportunities and focus the team on work with the highest leverage for AMD.
- Ensure research translates into impact—influencing the hardware and software roadmap, improving model performance on AMD platforms, and strengthening external partnerships.
- Partner deeply across silicon, architecture, compiler, and software teams, and with external labs and collaborators, to ground research in real problems and real deployment.
- Build the evaluation, infrastructure, and verification practices that make research results trustworthy and reproducible.
What you'll need
- PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Machine Learning, or a related field, or equivalent research experience and demonstrated impact.
- Demonstrated technical leadership in AI/ML research, with a strong track record of impactful published work and/or research shipped into production or frontier models.
- Deep, current expertise in one or more core areas—reinforcement learning, large-scale model training, AI-for-systems, or AI performance optimization—with the breadth to lead across several.
- Experience leading research teams and setting technical direction across multiple concurrent programs.
- Strong understanding of the hardware–software stack underpinning large-model training and inference.
- Ability to remain hands-on with training pipelines, research prototyping, or systems work while leading a team.
Skills: AI research, frontier AI, AMD silicon, large models, hardware-software stack
This role has been open 75 days — below the 83-day median for AI/ML Hardware Engineering roles.
AI/ML Hardware Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
508
|
Median days open
83 d
|
Median salary
$236k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | AMD | All employers we track in this specialty (508 roles · 77 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 41 | 508 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 406 | 6118 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 81 d | 83 d (−2 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $236k |
Skills observed across this category: AI research, frontier AI, AMD silicon, large models, hardware-software stack
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 99 open roles · median 114 d
- NVIDIA · 93 open roles · median 54 d
- AMD (this employer) · 41 open roles · median 81 d
- Micron Technology · 27 open roles · median 68 d
- Analog Devices · 19 open roles · median 36 d
- Mobileye · 17 open roles · median 80 d
How we counted: 508 open AI/ML Hardware Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 77 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 18 Oct 2026. Specialty figures count only roles carrying this exact specialty label, so an employer's related work in neighbouring specialties is not included there — it is counted in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family row. Figures refresh nightly.