/01
Founding Member of Technical Staff, AI Infrastructure
Location: San Francisco / Bay Area preferred. Remote exceptional for the right person.
Hiring · Small founding team
Come build the open evidence layer for the next era of AI infrastructure.
Touchdown Labs helps teams make AI workloads cheaper and easier to own by turning inference behavior, traces, workload replay, GPU signals, and task-path evidence into reusable optimization artifacts.
AI inference infrastructure is where we start, because that is where the cost and urgency are highest today. The deeper mission is broader: to be the interface layer between humans and complex technical systems, and to make those systems understandable, measurable, and optimizable, expanding over time into chips, compilers, robotics, scientific computing, and simulation as the evidence justifies each step.
We are hiring a small number of senior, hands-on builders across AI infrastructure. The role pages are lanes for matching and search, not rigid boxes. Strong generalists with sharp systems judgment can grow into the exact surface.
You do not need every exact keyword. We care about learning speed, AI-native workflow, evidence quality, ownership, and clear communication. We keep the technical keywords visible so the right people can find the work, but they are examples of the terrain, not a checklist.
/01
Open roles.
Select a role to read the full job description. These are focused application lanes, not a broad department map. Every role is senior, hands-on, and close to the company-building work.
/02
Founding Kernel Engineer, GPU Kernels
Location: San Francisco / Bay Area preferred. Remote exceptional for the right person.
/03
Founding Inference Systems Engineer
Location: San Francisco / Bay Area preferred. Remote exceptional for the right person.
/02
What we look for.
Evidence over vibes
You can connect claims to traces, code, measurements, artifacts, or customer-visible outcomes.
Depth or fast range
You might be deep in one layer or unusually fast at crossing layers. We care less about perfect resume match and more about how quickly you can learn the next hard surface.
Evidence taste
You know that p95, p99, replay, traces, profiler output, customer examples, and reproducible artifacts matter because they let people make better decisions.
Agent systems literacy
You can reason about evals, tool use, memory, routing, RL loops, DSPy, GEPA, RLM, PEEK, and long-horizon task reliability without treating agents as magic.
Stack range
You can move between product workload, runtime, GPU, kernel, and business constraint without losing the thread.
Founder-stage ownership
You do not need a polished org around you. You can take vague context, find the sharp edge, make progress, and write down what became true.
/03
Apply for this job.
Use the form below to send a resume and links. If uploads fail, email the same material to [email protected] with the subject line "Touchdown Labs role: [role name]".
We care most about evidence: code, papers, benchmarks, traces, profiles, talks, repos, production systems, or a clear description of private work and the proof shape.