---
title: 'ML Systems Engineer — Inference Acceleration at Arago'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/ml-systems-engineer-inference-acceleration-arago-paris-hv83wjsxczfd'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-07'
---

# ML Systems Engineer — Inference Acceleration at Arago

- **Company:** Arago
- **Location:** Paris, France
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-17
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-07
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/arago/754d02a9-339a-4768-b2ca-b07e941346ba

## Job description

## MEET ARAGO AND THE ARAGONIANS

Arago’s mission is to re-engineer the foundations of computing from first principles.

The explosive growth of AI is pushing the industry to rethink how processors are built. Arago is meeting that challenge with a proprietary technology that fuses optical and CMOS technologies to deliver an order-of-magnitude increase in performance.

Arago is the fastest, and currently the only, company to have built such a processor. It's backed by leading deep-tech investors and some of the most respected figures in semiconductors and computing, including the CEO of Arm, the founder of macOS who worked directly with Steve Jobs at Apple, an Nvidia Fellow, the Head of Optics at Google, and many other industry leaders.

Our work is guided by three clear values: do great things, move with high velocity, and operate as one unit. We work in a demanding environment where constant learning, ownership, and execution are expected, and where exceptional people have the opportunity to do their life’s work.

## WHAT YOU’LL DO

Optimize the execution and serving of modern AI models on Arago's custom accelerator. Work across kernels, model execution, multi-device distribution, runtime, and inference serving, while helping shape the software stack around the capabilities of Arago's hardware.

## REQUIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE

- Strong experience in high-performance ML inference, GPU/accelerator programming, or ML systems engineering.
- Deep understanding of computer architecture, accelerator/GPU execution models, memory hierarchies, parallelism, and performance bottlenecks.
- Experience developing and optimizing custom kernels using CUDA, Triton, ROCm/HIP, or equivalent low-level programming environments.
- Experience with operator fusion, tiling, scheduling, data movement optimization, graph execution, and profiling of compute- and memory-bound workloads.
- Strong understanding of distributed model execution, including tensor, pipeline, sequence, and/or expert parallelism and communication/computation overlap.
- Hands-on experience with modern inference-serving systems such as vLLM, SGLang, TensorRT-LLM, or equivalent, including KV-cache management, continuous batching, paged attention, and prefill/decode scheduling.
- Strong C++ and Python skills, and comfort working on a custom accelerator stack where compiler, runtime, kernels, and abstractions are actively being developed. Exposure to or experience with MLIR and MLIR dialects is a strong plus.
- Language: English at a proficient level.

## RESPONSIBILITIES

- Analyze modern AI workloads and identify kernel-, runtime-, memory-, and system-level bottlenecks on Arago's accelerator.
- Develop and optimize custom kernels, fused operators, and execution strategies to maximize device utilization.
- Design efficient mappings of models and operators across multiple Arago devices, including communication and synchronization strategies.
- Develop inference-serving techniques such as continuous batching, paged KV caches, prefix/context caching, chunked prefill, and prefill/decode interleaving or disaggregation.
- Build profiling, benchmarking, and performance-analysis infrastructure spanning kernels, full models, and serving workloads.
- Work closely with Arago's hardware, compiler, and runtime teams to co-design software abstractions and influence future hardware features based on real model workloads.

## PAY AND BENEFITS

- Competitive cash compensation, with final package based on location, experience, and the pay of team members in similar positions.
- Meaningful stock option plan offered (included in the majority of full time offers).
- Healthcare coverage (including family-friendly options), pension contributions, professional development support, and 25 days of PTO, in addition to public holidays.
- Ownership of a key technical domain, with significant vertical and/or horizontal growth opportunities, based on performance and individual drive.

We look forward to hearing how you can help shape the future of AI at Arago.

## About Arago

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Arago builds photonic AI accelerator chips that use lasers instead of transistors to dramatically cut energy consumption while remaining compatible with existing AI software and hardware ecosystems.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage)
- **Headquarters**: Paris, France
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Nicolas Muller (CEO), Eliott Sarrey (CTO), Ambroise Müller (CSO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Semiconductor hardware, photonic computing, artificial intelligence infrastructure
- **Target customers**: AI model developers, cloud data centers, enterprises deploying large-scale AI workloads (B2B, infrastructure)
- **Mission or purpose**: To overcome the compute and memory ceilings of traditional silicon by leveraging light as a computing principle, delivering 10×–30× reductions in energy consumption for AI workloads.

## Products & Services
- **JEF (codenamed)**: A photonic AI accelerator chip that processes data using photons instead of electrons. It integrates with standard software frameworks (PyTorch, etc.) through the CARLOTA® software stack, abstracts hardware details, and achieves multi-PetaOp/s performance with significantly lower energy and cost per operation. Designed for high-volume AI tasks with n³ complexity.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$26.0M** (Seed round closed August 2025)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Co-led by **Protagonist**, **Earlybird Venture Capital**, and **Visionaries Tomorrow**, with participation from **Generative IQ**, **C4 Ventures**, and angels including **Bertrand Serlet** (former VP at Apple), **Christophe Frey** (GM at Arm), **Olivier Pomel** (co-founder of Datadog), **Thomas Wolf** (co-founder of Hugging Face), and **Jack Abraham** (co-founder of Exowatt).
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew **95.2% year-over-year** to 35 employees (+20 people). operates in 7 countries (France, US, UK, Norway, Israel, Spain, Bulgaria). Technical staff makes up 59% of the team. Actively hiring 16+ roles across hardware, software, and people operations.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Photonic compute core**: Uses light instead of electrons, generating far less heat and enabling 10×–30× lower energy consumption per inference/training task.
- **Full ecosystem compatibility**: The chip is designed to work with existing manufacturing processes, standard AI frameworks (PyTorch), and GPU-like programming models—avoiding the “cold start” problem that plagues most alternative processors.
- **Deterministic architecture**: Achieves high memory-transfer efficiency for pointwise operations (n² complexity) while accelerating tensor-heavy workloads (n³ complexity) at ultra-low power.
- **Backed by deep-tech veterans**: Investors and advisors from Apple, Arm, Nvidia, Microsoft, Hugging Face give credibility and access to semiconductor industry expertise.

## Strategic Focus
- Accelerate product development and commercialisation of the “JEF” processor.
- Grow the team across development sites in Paris, Tel Aviv, and other hubs.
- Deepen business partnerships with AI infrastructure providers and foundries.
- Maintain full software-layer abstraction (CARLOTA®) to ensure seamless adoption by existing AI workflows.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Arago describes itself as a team of “AI engineers and physicists who believe in great science and fast achievements” and seeks “bold jack-of-all-trades who love to ship products quickly” ([arago.inc](https://www.arago.inc/)).
- **Work model**: Roles vary by location and function – some positions are on-site (Paris, Tel Aviv), others offer remote or hybrid arrangements (e.g., Head of People – Remote; Software Engineer – Drivers & Virtualization – Remote or Hybrid; Digital IC Backend Design Engineer – On-site) ([Built In](https://builtin.com/company/arago-inc/jobs)).
- **Growth trajectory**: A fast-scaling startup (95% YoY headcount increase) with a mission to redefine AI hardware – ideal for engineers and scientists who want to work on cutting-edge photonics, hardware design, and AI software.
- **Team composition**: Highly technical, with 59% of staff in engineering and science roles, and alumni from top research labs and companies like AMD, Mobileye, and EssilorLuxottica.

## Sources
1. [arago.inc](https://www.arago.inc/)
2. [LinkedIn – Arago Inc](https://www.linkedin.com/company/aragoinc)
3. [Tech.eu – Arago raises $26M](https://tech.eu/2025/07/08/arago-raises-26m-to-slash-ai-energy-consumption-with-breakthrough-photonic-chip/)
4. [Built In – Arago Inc Jobs](https://builtin.com/company/arago-inc/jobs)
5. [Ashby – Arago Careers](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/arago)

## Other roles at Arago

- [Talent Acquisition (France)](https://feeny.ai/job/talent-acquisition-france-arago-paris-gx6r2ptzp4x0) — Paris, France
- [Senior Mixed-Signal Verification Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-mixed-signal-verification-engineer-arago-paris-27w2w62mgcwz) — Paris, France
- [Senior Hardware Design Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-hardware-design-engineer-arago-paris-3qaxnnypq9g3) — Paris, France
- [Mixed-Signal IC Design Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/mixed-signal-ic-design-engineer-arago-paris-rr1jk8q288v5) — Paris, France
- [Architecture Modeling Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/architecture-modeling-engineer-arago-paris-fapf8vvzb1ph) — Paris, France
- [SW Team Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/sw-team-lead-arago-paris-rrksrjj9qh9t) — Paris, France
- [Software Engineer — Computation Kernels and Performance](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-computation-kernels-and-performance-arago-paris-swx0mfz1tyz1) — Paris, France
- [Full-Stack Engineer, Office of the CEO](https://feeny.ai/job/full-stack-engineer-office-of-the-ceo-arago-paris-gqqcyj5mz9rk) — Paris, France
- [AI/ML Scientist — Quantization & Numerical Robustness](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-ml-scientist-quantization-numerical-robustness-arago-paris-rrdc6m8hcsfg) — Paris, France
- [Senior ASIC Architect](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-asic-architect-arago-paris-qm3pyhfqb1cx) — Paris, France