---
title: 'AI Runtime Engineer at Modular'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/ai-runtime-engineer-modular-edinburgh-4y9j51sdexm8'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-17'
---

# AI Runtime Engineer at Modular

- **Company:** Modular
- **Location:** Edinburgh, United Kingdom
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-09-15
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-17
- **Apply:** https://jobs.gem.com/modular/am9icG9zdDoSyYJQr703Rnv8UHICrdpi

## Job description

About the role:

ML developers today face significant friction when deploying trained models. They work in a fragmented space with incomplete, patchwork solutions that require extensive performance tuning and model-specific optimizations. At Modular, we are building the next-generation AI platform that will radically improve how developers build and deploy AI models.

A core part of this offering is a platform that enables customers to achieve state-of-the-art performance across model families and frameworks. As an AI Runtime Engineer, you will own a runtime that operates on various CPU, GPU, and accelerator hardware platforms, optimizing performance for diverse customer AI models.

LOCATION: Candidates based in the United Kingdom are welcome to apply. This role will be based in our Edinburgh office (minimum 3 days per week on-site) with relocation assistance provided for eligible candidates. All new hires complete onboarding in-person.

What you will do:

- Design and develop runtime and cross-stack optimizations to improve CPU, GPU, and accelerator efficiency, addressing issues such as CPU overhead, caching, and data locality across multiple devices.
- Work with vendor-specific networking libraries to unlock high performance data transfer for multiple topologies.
- Collaborate with the compiler, kernels, serving, and models teams to design core technologies that achieve state-of-the-art end-to-end performance on various CPU and GPU hardware.
- Collaborate with the customer success team and engage with customers to understand their performance requirements and use cases.
- Collaborate with tooling and infrastructure teams to design systems for automated performance analysis and benchmarking.

What you bring to the table:

- 2+ years of experience working on high-performance computing systems.
- Experience in C++ programming and complex software systems.
- Experience with CPU or GPU runtime optimizations and performance analysis on CPUs, GPUs, or AI accelerators.
- Proficiency with one or more profiling tools (CPU or GPU).
- Creativity and curiosity for solving complex problems, a team-oriented attitude that enables you to work well with others, and alignment with our culture.

Helpful, but not required:

- Experience with ML graph optimizations, parallel / distributed programming, heterogeneous ML computation, and/or code generation.
- Exposure to MLIR, LLVM, and/or the Mojo programming language.
- Advanced degree in Computer Science or a related area is a plus.

What Modular brings to the table:

- Amazing Team. We are a progressive and agile team with some of the industry’s best engineering and product leaders.
- World-class Benefits. In order to attract the best, we need to offer the best. Your benefits package may include comprehensive healthcare coverage, retirement and savings programs, employee stock purchase opportunities, paid time off, wellbeing resources, family support programs, and learning and development opportunities. Please note that specific benefit packages may vary based on your location, you can read more about [benefits offered by Qualcomm here](https://www.qualcomm.com/company/careers/benefits).
- Competitive Compensation. We offer very strong compensation packages, including RSU grants. We want people to be focused on their best work and believe in tailoring compensation plans to meet the needs of our workforce.
- Team Building Events. We organize regular team onsites and local meetups in Los Altos, CA as well as different cities. Traveling 2-4 times a year is expected for all roles.

Working at Modular will enable you to grow quickly as you work alongside incredibly motivated and talented people who have high standards, possess a growth mindset, and a purpose to truly change the world.

The estimated base salary range for this role to be performed in the United Kingdom, is £82,800.00 - £123,600.00 GBP.

The salary for the successful applicant will depend on a variety of permissible, non-discriminatory job-related factors, which include but are not limited to education, training, work experience, business needs, or market demands. This range may be modified in the future. The total compensation for a candidate will also include annual target bonus, equity, and benefits, with equity making up a significant portion of your total compensation. For candidates who fall outside of the listed requirements, we nevertheless encourage you to apply as we may have upcoming openings that are lower/higher level than the ones advertised.

## About Modular

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Modular builds a unified, high-performance AI inference platform that enables developers to run AI workloads efficiently across any hardware.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Acquired by Qualcomm in July 2026)
- **Headquarters**: Los Altos, California, United States
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Chris Lattner and Tim Davis

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: AI Infrastructure, Deep Learning, Software Development
- **Target customers**: AI/ML engineers, data scientists, and enterprises deploying large-scale AI models (B2B, Enterprise)
- **Mission statement**: "Make AI’s compute layer unified, efficient, and accessible to all."

## Products & Services
- **Modular Platform (MAX)**: A unified AI inference platform offering text, audio, and image inference. It provides state-of-the-art performance with shared or dedicated endpoints, deployment in Modular's cloud or the customer's VPC, and support for custom models. It includes a high-performance, hardware-agnostic serving framework that automatically optimizes kernels across accelerators.
- **Mojo**: A high-performance systems language designed for writing composable GPU kernels, enabling maximum performance across different hardware.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (acquired by Qualcomm). Total funding raised was $380M.
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding of $380M, with an annual revenue of $1M as of the latest data.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: General Catalyst (lead, Series B), Google Ventures (lead, Seed), US Innovative Technology Fund (lead, Series C).
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew by 39.9% year-over-year to 157 employees. The company was acquired by Qualcomm in July 2026, signaling a major strategic validation and exit. It maintains a strong technical workforce (110 out of 157 employees are in technical roles).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Hardware Agnosticism**: The platform runs seamlessly across NVIDIA, AMD, Trainium, TPU, Qualcomm, Intel, ARM, and Apple silicon, providing true portability and preventing vendor lock-in.
- **Full-Stack Optimization**: Optimizes from low-level GPU kernels to API endpoints, delivering significant performance gains (e.g., 2x improvement over vLLM on diverse hardware) and up to 50% cost savings.
- **Founding Team**: Led by Chris Lattner (creator of LLVM, Clang, and Swift) and Tim Davis, with decades of experience building AI infrastructure at Google and other big tech companies.

## Strategic Focus
- **Unifying AI Compute**: The company’s core mission is to solve the fragmentation in AI infrastructure by creating a modular and composable platform.
- **Open Source & Ecosystem**: Modular is open-sourcing the Mojo language and the MAX engine to drive adoption and build a community.
- **Post-Acquisition Integration**: Following the acquisition by Qualcomm, the strategic focus will likely shift towards integrating its technology into Qualcomm’s hardware ecosystem and scaling its deployment to edge and mobile devices.

## Why Work Here
- **Cutting-Edge Technology**: Employees work on building deep learning infrastructure from silicon to system, offering full-stack mastery of the AI software/hardware stack.
- **Strong Compensation & Benefits**: Offers leading medical, dental, and vision insurance, strong compensation and equity packages, a 401k plan with up to 5% match, generous parental leave, unlimited paid time off, and a $1,500 work-from-home stipend.
- **Culture**: Described as intellectually curious, humble, and collaborative. The company values work/life balance and offers flexible work hours and hybrid work options.
- **High Employee Ratings**: On LinkedIn, the company has a 4.3/5.0 employer rating, with perfect 5.0 scores for Culture and Career, and 4.6 for Work-Life and Compensation.
- **Onboarding & Process**: Onboarding occurs onsite at the Los Altos office. The interview process is straightforward, generally taking about 4 weeks, and includes a culture interview.

## Sources
1. [Modular Careers Page](https://www.modular.com/company/careers)
2. [Modular About Us](https://www.modular.com/company/about)
3. [Modular Website](https://www.modular.com/)
4. [Modular LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/modular-ai)
5. [Modular Careers on Gem](https://jobs.gem.com/modular)

## Other roles at Modular

- [Senior Technical Community Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-technical-community-manager-modular-united-states-canada-srs5wh13vqqg) — United States / Canada
- [Senior AI Runtime Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ai-runtime-engineer-modular-united-states-canada-7avvy2eryvt6) — United States / Canada
- [Engineering Manager, Hardware Bringup](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-hardware-bringup-modular-united-states-canada-8wfmtksxz83t) — United States / Canada
- [Developer Advocate, MAX Inference & Serving](https://feeny.ai/job/developer-advocate-max-inference-serving-modular-united-states-canada-s1r9bnna72jz) — United States / Canada
- [Senior Open Source Community Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-open-source-community-engineer-modular-united-states-canada-4mtpdvn8xgw9) — United States / Canada
- [Developer Advocate, Mojo](https://feeny.ai/job/developer-advocate-mojo-modular-united-states-canada-hgq4cjnkdxh8) — United States / Canada
- [AI Inference Tools Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-inference-tools-engineer-modular-united-kingdom-8sk0kdjq8g93) — United Kingdom
- [Staff Mojo Compiler Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-mojo-compiler-engineer-modular-united-states-canada-w9gadrp8gt9z) — United States / Canada
- [Mojo Tooling Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/mojo-tooling-engineer-modular-united-states-canada-3e5p6a9stqs6) — United States / Canada
- [Senior AI Framework Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ai-framework-engineer-modular-united-states-canada-cg0xyqkjj4mz) — United States / Canada