Founding Engineer -- AI Inference Stack

The Role: We are looking for elite systems hackers who want to own the software layer of a new architecture. You will be writing kernels and orchestration logic that outperform existing solutions.

What You Will Do:

• Architect the Stack: Iterate on our software layer that orchestrates inference across heterogenous cluster of compute resources.
• Kernel and Compiler Optimization: Write and optimize high-performance kernels in CUDA, Triton, or custom targets to squeeze every drop of performance from the system.
• The Runtime: Build the low-latency inference server, think a more performant custom version of vLLM or TensorRT-LLM, that manages KV cache at scale without the overhead of traditional PCIe bottlenecks.
• Voice and Agentic Optimization: Solve the unique challenges of instant-on Voice AI, focused on latency, and the high-context demands of coding agents, focused on memory management.

Who You Are:

• Curiosity-driven, with a genuine passion for compute architectures and problem solving
• Systems Obsessed: You have a deep understanding of computer architecture, memory hierarchies, and low-level systems programming in C++, Rust, or CUDA.
• AI Fluent: You understand the guts of transformer architectures and have experience with inference frameworks like vLLM, TensorRT, ONNX, and Kubernetes.
• A First-Principles Thinker: You are not afraid to throw out the standard way of doing things if it means achieving a 10x performance gain.

Why Piris Labs?

• High Stakes, High Growth: We are a small, elite team of builders from Meta and Twitter, trained at Stanford, Harvard, and MIT. No middle management. No alignment meetings. Just engineering.
• Venture Backed: Backed by YC W26 and tier-1 VC firms.
• SF-Centric: We work in person in San Francisco. This is where the density of AI talent is, and we thrive on the high-bandwidth collaboration of a physical lab.
• The Path to Full Time: This internship is a trial run for a founding-level equity stake. We are looking for people to grow with us through our Series A and beyond.