Principal ML Investigator - Sunnyvale, CA, United States
Originally posted 12 December 2025 by the employer.
Work on the Cerebras platform, which is redefining AI supercomputing.
About the role
This role involves leading a new ML effort focused on advanced development and research within Cerebras, coordinating with existing Field ML, Applied ML, and Core ML teams. This team will explore areas such as post-training and reinforcement learning, dataset curation, LLM pretraining techniques, and sparsity to optimize models for the Cerebras platform.
What you'll do
- Build a team for industry research and advanced development.
- Organize advanced development topics into a cohesive agenda.
- Adapt novel algorithms and model architectures to run on the Cerebras platform.
- Systematically train, tune, and evaluate models to guide production scenarios.
- Collaborate with other teams to co-design hardware and software architectures.
- Collaborate with external partners (customers, academic) to drive insight and credibility.
What you'll need
- PhD in Computer Science or related field.
- Strong grasp of ML theory in post-training and reinforcement learning, dataset curation and optimization, LLM pretraining, or sparsity.
- Proven experience engineering ML systems for scale or production deployment.
- Experience leading a team of researchers or engineers.
Nice to have
- Track record of patents or publications in conferences or journals.
- Experience with large language models (e.g., GPT family, Llama).
- Experience with distributed training concepts and frameworks.
- Experience in training speed optimizations, such as model architecture transformations to target hardware, or low-level kernel development (e.g., Triton).
- Ability to analytically model or optimize system performance.
Skills: LLM Pretraining, Sparsity, model architectures, AI supercomputers, distributed training
This role has been open 84 days — exactly the 84-day median for AI/ML Hardware Engineering roles.
AI/ML Hardware Engineering · AI ML Hardware
|
Open roles in category
507
|
Median days open
84 d
|
Median salary
$236k
|
See the full market breakdown ▾Category comparison, skills in demand, and who else is hiring
| Metric | Cerebras | All employers we track in this specialty (507 roles · 77 employers) |
|---|---|---|
| Open roles in this specialty | 9 | 507 |
| Open roles in the wider Software, Firmware & Systems family | 73 | 6118 · 145 employers |
| Median days open | 84 d | 84 d (same as this employer) |
| Median salary (USD postings) | — | $236k |
Skills observed across this category: LLM Pretraining, Sparsity, model architectures, AI supercomputers, distributed training
Who's hiring in this category
- Qualcomm · 99 open roles · median 115 d
- NVIDIA · 91 open roles · median 54 d
- AMD · 41 open roles · median 82 d
- Micron Technology · 28 open roles · median 61 d
- Analog Devices · 19 open roles · median 37 d
- Mobileye · 17 open roles · median 81 d
How we counted: 507 open AI/ML Hardware Engineering (AI ML Hardware) roles from 77 employers tracked in the SemiconductorJobs index, counted 19 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.