Director, Frontier AI Research & Partnerships - CA, Santa Clara, United States
Originally posted 4 August 2026 by the employer.
About the role
AMD is looking for a Director, AI Research-Strategic Partnerships to lead research collaborations with frontier AI labs and strategic model-development partners, setting technical direction at the intersection of reinforcement learning, frontier model training, and AMD silicon.
What you'll do
- Define and own the AI research strategy for AMD's strategic lab partnerships, aligning joint technical roadmaps with AMD's hardware and software priorities.
- Build, lead, and mentor a high-caliber team of AI researchers and research engineers; set research direction, hiring bar, and standards for technical excellence.
- Serve as AMD's senior research counterpart to partner labs, earning credibility as a peer on reinforcement learning, model training, and large-scale systems.
- Drive joint research programs spanning RL training pipelines (e.g., async RL, importance sampling, reward modeling), GPU programming, kernel and PPA optimization, and frontier model performance on AMD platforms.
- Translate frontier-model requirements into concrete, prioritized input to AMD's hardware roadmap and software stack, partnering closely with silicon, architecture, and compiler teams.
- Establish IP-preserving collaboration architectures (e.g., confidential compute) that let AMD and partners co-develop while protecting each party's intellectual property.
What you'll need
- Demonstrated technical leadership in AI/ML research, with a track record of impactful published work and/or research shipped into production or frontier models.
- Deep, current expertise in one or more of: reinforcement learning, large-scale model training, GPU programming, and AI systems/performance optimization.
- Experience leading research teams and setting technical direction across multiple concurrent programs.
- Experience working with or inside frontier AI labs, or leading external research partnerships, with the credibility to operate as a scientific peer.
- Strong understanding of the hardware–software stack underpinning large-model training and inference, and how architectural decisions affect model performance.
- Ability to remain hands-on with training pipelines, kernels, or research prototyping while leading a team.
Nice to have
- PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Machine Learning, or a related field, or equivalent research experience and demonstrated impact.
Skills: AI research, frontier AI labs, reinforcement learning, model training, GPU programming, hardware roadmap
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 labs, reinforcement learning, model training, GPU programming, hardware roadmap
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.