Director, AI Research - Recursive Self-Improvement - CA, Santa Clara, United States
Originally posted 4 August 2026 by the employer.
This role focuses on recursive self-improvement (RSI) using AI to enhance AMD's hardware design, kernel, and compiler optimization.
About the role
This role leads AMD's recursive self-improvement (RSI) agenda, applying AI to measurably improve hardware design, kernel and compiler optimization, and engineering workflows, feeding those gains back into the loop.
What you'll do
- Define and own AMD's internal recursive self-improvement research agenda.
- Build, lead, and mentor a high-caliber team of AI researchers and research engineers.
- Drive reinforcement learning (RL)-based research on internal targets such as kernel and PPA optimization, design-space exploration, and code/workflow generation.
- Design and own the verification and evaluation infrastructure required for self-improvement loops.
- Partner with silicon, architecture, compiler, and engineering-productivity teams to embed research into AMD design and development flows.
- Represent the RSI research agenda to executive leadership, communicating progress, risks, and roadmap implications.
What you'll need
- Demonstrated technical leadership in AI/ML research with impactful published work or research shipped into production systems.
- Deep expertise in reinforcement learning, including reward modeling, training pipelines, and practical failure modes of RL at scale.
- Hands-on understanding of AI-for-systems problems, including code generation, compiler/kernel optimization, design-space exploration, or hardware/software co-design.
- Experience building coding RL loops.
- Experience leading research teams and setting technical direction across multiple concurrent programs.
- PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Machine Learning, or a related field, or equivalent research experience and demonstrated impact.
Skills: recursive self-improvement, reinforcement learning, hardware design, kernel optimization, compiler optimization
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: recursive self-improvement, reinforcement learning, hardware design, kernel optimization, compiler optimization
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.