Trainium (NKI) Kernel Expert
Some links on AITraining.jobs are referral links. If you sign up through one, AITraining.jobs may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never changes what a platform pays you.
About the role
Evaluate the quality, correctness, and hardware-appropriateness of Neuron Kernel Interface (NKI) development tasks used to train and evaluate a frontier AI lab's models. You'll assess CUDA→NKI migration fidelity, Trainium-specific performance-optimization quality, and cross-platform numerical-correctness standards - and provide clear, rubric-based written feedback.
Basic Qualifications
- 2+ years of hands-on experience developing or optimizing kernels using the Neuron Kernel Interface (NKI) targeting AWS Trainium/Inferentia2 hardware
- Strong understanding of NKI-specific development patterns: tile-based computation, SBUF/PSUM/HBM memory-hierarchy management, partition-dimension constraints, and DMA orchestration
- Demonstrated experience assessing CUDA→NKI migration quality
- Familiarity with Trainium-specific performance profiling (NeuronCore pipeline utilization, tensor-engine throughput, memory-bandwidth bottlenecks)
- Experience defining or evaluating cross-platform numerical-correctness standards (GPU vs Trainium accumulation order, rounding behavior, mixed-precision semantics)
Preferred Qualifications
- Direct experience with AWS Neuron SDK, Neuron Compiler internals, or contributions to NKI kernel libraries
- Prior CUDA or Triton kernel development
- Familiarity with Trainium hardware specifications (NeuronCore-v2 architecture, on-chip SRAM topology, supported data types: FP32/BF16/FP8/INT8)
- Experience benchmarking ML training workloads on Trn1/Trn2 instances
Where you can work
This role is 100% remote, for applicants located in United States.
From Mercor's job posting, checked Oct 18, 2026.
About Mercor
Premium expert network: physicians, lawyers, engineers, PhDs.
How it pays: Weekly via Stripe (1099 contractors).
Similar open roles
Some links on AITraining.jobs are referral links. If you sign up through one, AITraining.jobs may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never changes what a platform pays you.
$65/hr
$70–$90/hr
$65/hr
$60/hr
An experienced engineer?
One profile for every AI training platform. Companies ask us for people with a specific language, country or credential: add yours once, and when a role fits, we introduce you, only with your yes. Free.
Get new Mercor roles by email
We check the Mercor job board daily and email you its newest roles each week, plus similar paid roles elsewhere. Free, unsubscribe anytime.