Forward Deployed AI Research Scientist - CA, Santa Clara, United States
$178,500 - $306,000 USD yearly
Originally posted 7 July 2026 by the employer. Relisted by the employer on 13 October 2026.
About the role
AMD is hiring a Forward Deployed AI Research Scientist to bring advanced AI capabilities into engineering and customer-facing workflows by combining applied AI research, technical strategy, prototyping, and field-facing collaboration.
What you'll do
- Identify high-value AI opportunities in compute, systems, software, and hardware engineering workflows alongside internal and external stakeholders. - Translate partner and customer needs into research questions, technical plans, evaluation criteria, and prototype paths. - Prototype and evaluate modern AI methods for engineering tasks, including agentic workflows, tool use, code generation, debugging, optimization, retrieval, and learning from feedback. - Partner with research and engineering teams to define metrics, evals, benchmarks, and acceptance criteria for AI-assisted workflows. - Build technical narratives, demos, and decision materials to communicate tradeoffs, progress, risks, and strategic value to senior stakeholders. - Capture recurring customer and partner needs into reusable insights for product, research, platform, and engineering roadmaps.
What you'll need
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Machine Learning, or related field, or equivalent practical experience. - Strong background in AI, machine learning, systems, or applied research, with the ability to turn ideas into prototypes and measurable experiments. - Experience with modern generative AI methods, LLMs, agents, tool use, retrieval, post-training, evaluation, or applied ML systems. - Strong programming ability in Python and familiarity with ML frameworks such as PyTorch, JAX, TensorFlow, or similar. - Ability to work with technical stakeholders across software, hardware, infrastructure, research, product, and business teams. - Communication skills to explain complex AI and systems topics clearly to technical and executive audiences.
Nice to have
- Master's degree or PhD in AI, ML systems, computer systems, GPU computing, or hardware/software co-design. - Experience in forward-deployed engineering, customer engineering, applied research, technical partnerships, solutions architecture, or strategic technical programs. - Experience with GPU systems, CPU performance, compilers, distributed training/inference, hardware/software co-design, or performance engineering. - Experience designing benchmarks, evals, experiment platforms, or metrics for AI systems. - Familiarity with semiconductor, datacenter, AI infrastructure, or high-performance computing environments. - Publications, open-source contributions, technical blogs, demos, or shipped AI systems.
Skills: AI capabilities, engineering workflows, applied AI research, generative AI, LLMs, agents
This role has been open 106 days — well above the 83-day median for AI/ML Hardware Engineering roles.
AI/ML Hardware Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
511
|
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 (511 roles · 76 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 38 | 511 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 406 | 6296 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 95 d | 83 d (+12 d vs this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $236k |
Skills observed across this category: AI capabilities, engineering workflows, applied AI research, generative AI, LLMs, agents
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 103 open roles · median 112 d
- NVIDIA · 91 open roles · median 56 d
- AMD (this employer) · 40 open roles · median 85 d
- Micron Technology · 27 open roles · median 56 d
- Analog Devices · 18 open roles · median 39 d
- Mobileye · 18 open roles · median 84 d
How we counted: 511 open AI/ML Hardware Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 76 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 21 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.