Axelera AI is seeking a Senior/Staff Backend Compiler Engineer to join our Compiler team. You will contribute to our in-house domain-specific language, adding features and enhancing the compiler stack to create a seamless developer experience. Your core focus will be optimizing the compiler backend to efficiently map high-level workloads onto heterogeneous hardware architectures, optimizing compute, memory, and data movement.
What You'll Do
- Evolve our kernel language to be usable by developers both inside and outside the company.
- Design and implement backend compiler optimizations to efficiently map workloads onto heterogeneous architectures (CPU, NPU, and specialized accelerators).
- Implement advanced optimization strategies across the compiler stack, such as memory planning, tiling, vectorization, task partitioning, and concurrency optimizations.
- Contribute to compiler infrastructure, intermediate representations, and optimization passes.
- Analyze performance bottlenecks and implement improvements based on profiling and benchmarking.
- Contribute to technical direction, mentor junior engineers, and promote engineering best practices.
- Work effectively within a collaborative, distributed engineering team.
What We're Looking For
- A Master’s or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related technical field.
- 5+ years of experience in compiler development, systems programming, or performance-critical backend software engineering.
- Strong understanding of compiler backend concepts, including scheduling, memory optimization, and code generation.
- Demonstrated experience optimizing computations at a low level, such as tiling, memory planning, concurrent scheduling, and task synchronization.
- Basic to solid understanding of computer architecture concepts like memory hierarchies, DMA controllers, Network-on-Chip (NoC), and modern CPU architectures (RISC-V, ARM, x86).
- Familiarity with heterogeneous computing architectures, such as CPU paired with an accelerator (GPU, NPU, DSP).
- Strong programming skills in Python and good proficiency in C++.
- Experience working collaboratively in a team environment.
Nice to Have
- Experience with modern compiler frameworks such as MLIR, LLVM, or TVM.
- Experience working with domain-specific languages (DSLs) like Triton or cuTile.
- Experience with RISC-V architecture, including vector extensions.
- Experience optimizing deep learning or high-performance computing workloads.
- Experience working close to hardware or with hardware/software co-design.
- Experience in performance analysis, profiling, and optimization.
Technical Stack
- Python
- C++
Team & Environment
You'll join a world-class, collaborative team of 220+ employees, including 49+ PhDs, distributed across Europe.
Benefits & Compensation
- Attractive compensation package
- Pension plan
- Extensive employee insurances
- Option to get company shares
Work Mode
This is a hybrid role based in Belgium (Leuven), Netherlands (Amsterdam, Eindhoven), Switzerland (Zurich), Italy (Florence, Milan), or the United Kingdom (Bristol).
We maintain an open culture that supports creativity and innovation, emphasize collaborative ownership with freedom and responsibility, and embrace equal opportunity and diversity.
