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Axelera AI is a deep-tech AI platform company that has raised $450M and built a 250+ person team (including 60+ PhDs) across 20 countries. The company operates offices in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, the UK, and is headquartered in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Their Metis AI Platform delivers 3-5x efficiency and performance improvements, with a business pipeline exceeding $100M.
The Applications team develops customer-facing components of the Voyager SDK, including low-code model deployment, end-to-end pipeline development, application integration, and analytics. Customers use these tools to evaluate, prototype, and build production AI solutions accelerated by Axelera AI devices.
You will own a significant area of the Applications stack as a Staff/Principal-level engineer. This role requires identifying and executing on opportunities that demand strong technical judgment and difficult prioritization, pushing technical boundaries, and creating reusable architectures that elevate the team. You will operate with significant autonomy, navigating ambiguity where clear playbooks don't exist—whether compiling graphical representations of ML pipelines, optimizing memory usage on heterogeneous hardware, or architecting low-level computer vision operators.
Key responsibilities include: owning end-to-end technical strategy for a major area of the Voyager SDK's application layer; setting technical direction for image pre/post-processing operators and decoders; driving integration of industry-standard model frameworks; defining company-wide metadata representations for common model types; taking accountability for end-to-end pipeline latency and throughput; representing the Applications team's technical capabilities to business stakeholders and customers; mentoring engineers; and driving documentation standards.
The role offers flexible working arrangements: work from Axelera offices (Leuven, Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Zurich, Florence, Milan, Bristol), work fully remote from any European country, or relocate to Italy or the Netherlands. Priority given to candidates based in Bavaria, Belgium, or Italy.
Qualifications: BS/MS in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent, with 8+ years of hands-on experience in semiconductor and/or AI industry. Deep expertise with edge deployment frameworks (OpenVINO, TensorRT). Experience with GPU computing APIs (OpenCL, Vulkan). Strong track record with model optimization (quantization, compression, pruning). Expert-level Python proficiency with ML libraries (PyTorch, TensorFlow). Expert-level Python/C++ proficiency. Demonstrated ability to architect, build, and deploy end-to-end quantized model pipelines at scale. Experience with transfer learning. MLIR and ONNXRuntime experience a plus. Track record navigating deep ambiguity and delivering outcomes without clear playbooks. Strong communication and influencing skills for high-stakes conversations with senior stakeholders and external representation. Experience mentoring engineers and raising technical bar. Proficient Linux skills. Practical knowledge of agile development (Jira, Git, GitHub). Self-motivated with ability to set technical direction and thrive with autonomy in fast-paced startup environment.
