As a Software Engineer on the Metal Runtime team at Tenstorrent, you’ll work on the low-level software that powers our AI accelerators. You’ll design fast, efficient runtime systems that run close to the hardware, and define the host and device APIs that expose these capabilities to the rest of the software stack. We believe APIs are a core part of systems design: they encode hardware semantics, performance tradeoffs, and concurrency models, and they live longer than any single implementation.

If you enjoy pushing performance, working close to the metal, and designing abstractions that make complex systems usable without sacrificing control, this is your kind of role.

This role is hybrid, based out of Santa Clara, CA; Austin, TX; Toronto, ON.

We welcome candidates at various experience levels for this role. During the interview process, candidates will be assessed for the appropriate level, and offers will align with that level, which may differ from the one in this posting.

Who You Are

• Strong coder in C or C++, and enjoy working close to hardware.
• Comfortable thinking in terms of threads, processors, and memory movement.
• Care deeply about API design, abstraction boundaries, and developer experience in low-level systems.
• Experienced (or interested in) designing libraries or interfaces used by other engineers.
• Think about long-term maintainability, usability, and clarity when designing systems.
• Curious about how runtimes and bare-metal software come together to power AI.
• Collaborative by nature and enjoy solving tough problems with smart people.

What We Need

• Design and evolve host and device APIs that expose Metal runtime capabilities clearly and efficiently.
• Translate low-level hardware behavior into intuitive, high-performance abstractions.
• Collaborate closely with runtime, kernel, and higher-level software teams to align API design with real-world usage.
• Ensure APIs balance performance, control, safety, and ease of use.
• Contribute to runtime implementation where needed to support API design and integration.
• Debug, analyze, and improve usability and performance across the software stack.

Nice to have:

• Experience designing or evolving non-trivial C++ APIs used by other engineers.
• Familiarity with APIs for accelerator systems (e.g., CUDA, SYCL, Vulkan, or similar).

What You Will Learn

• How to design APIs and abstractions for cutting-edge AI hardware.
• How to balance performance, control, and usability in low-level system design.
• How to translate hardware capabilities into clean, developer-friendly interfaces.
• Best practices for building maintainable, high-performance systems software.
• How software and hardware co-evolve in a fast-paced AI startup.

Compensation for all engineers at Tenstorrent ranges from $100k - $500k including base and variable compensation targets. Experience, skills, education, background and location all impact the actual offer made.

Tenstorrent offers a highly competitive compensation package and benefits, and we are an equal opportunity employer.

• Experienced compiler engineer with deep knowledge of GCC and LLVM internals, comfortable optimizing for custom hardware targets.
• Strong C/C++ developer with a solid grasp of algorithms, data structures, and performance analysis.
• Collaborative and analytical, able to work across hardware and software domains to deliver efficient, high-performance toolchains.
• Passionate about enabling breakthrough compute architectures through compiler innovation and software-hardware co-design.

• Design, develop, and optimize GCC and/or LLVM compilers for Tenstorrent’s custom RISC-V hardware and AI vector engines.
• Contribute to the co-design of Tenstorrent’s hardware and software stack to maximize performance and programmability.
• Benchmark, analyze, and tune performance of core applications across RISC-V and AI software environments.
• Collaborate with ML engineers to identify and implement compiler support for emerging AI workloads and frameworks.

• How compiler design directly impacts the performance and efficiency of next-generation RISC-V and AI architectures.
• Advanced techniques in hardware-software co-optimization and compiler-driven performance tuning.
• Integration of custom compilers with leading ML frameworks and runtime environments.
• The end-to-end toolchain flow that enables Tenstorrent’s scalable, high-performance AI compute systems.

Compensation for all engineers at Tenstorrent ranges from $100k - $500k including base and variable compensation targets. Experience, skills, education, background and location all impact the actual offer made.

Tenstorrent offers a highly competitive compensation package and benefits, and we are an equal opportunity employer.

As a Software Engineer on the Metal Runtime team at Tenstorrent, you’ll work on the low-level software that powers our AI accelerators. You’ll build and optimize high-performance runtime systems that execute directly on the hardware, focusing on scheduling, memory movement, and efficient execution across massively parallel processors. We believe runtime systems are a core part of performance: they determine how hardware resources are utilized, how data flows through the system, and how efficiently workloads are executed at scale.

If you enjoy pushing performance, working close to the metal, and solving complex systems challenges at the hardware/software boundary, this is your kind of role.

This role is hybrid, based out of Santa Clara, CA; Austin, TX; Toronto, ON.

We welcome candidates at various experience levels for this role. During the interview process, candidates will be assessed for the appropriate level, and offers will align with that level, which may differ from the one in this posting.

Who You Are

• Strong coder in C or C++, and love working close to hardware.
• Comfortable thinking in terms of threads, processors, and memory movement, and experienced writing fast, parallel code across multiple processors.
• Enjoy optimizing execution, scheduling, and memory systems for performance at scale.
• Comfortable debugging at the hardware/software boundary and reasoning about system behavior end-to-end.
• Curious about how runtimes and bare-metal software come together to power AI.
• Collaborative by nature and enjoy solving tough problems with smart people.

What We Need

• Build and optimize the Metal runtime that executes directly on our AI accelerators.
• Develop bare-metal systems that manage compute execution, scheduling, and resource utilization.
• Optimize memory movement and data flow across massively parallel hardware.
• Work closely with hardware teams to maximize performance and efficiency of our architecture.
• Debug, analyze, and tune runtime behavior across complex, distributed systems.

What You Will Learn

• How to design high-performance runtime systems for cutting-edge AI hardware.
• How execution, scheduling, and memory systems interact at scale.
• How to make custom ASICs and co-processors work efficiently across the chip.
• Best practices for debugging complex, performance-critical software.
• How software and hardware co-evolve in a fast-paced AI startup.

Compensation for all engineers at Tenstorrent ranges from $100k - $500k including base and variable compensation targets. Experience, skills, education, background and location all impact the actual offer made.

Tenstorrent offers a highly competitive compensation package and benefits, and we are an equal opportunity employer.