
Research Engineer, ML Platform at Mistral (Palo Alto, CA)
Mistral· Palo Alto, CA·
Role details
Mistral at a glance
A French AI lab building open and frontier-grade large language models, with the full developer and enterprise stack around them.
Mistral is a French AI lab that builds open and frontier-grade large language models and sells the full stack around them: developer tooling, an agent studio, consumer and enterprise apps like Le Chat and Vibe, custom model training, and its own GPU compute. Its edge is deployment control, with open weights, EU hosting, and self-hosting for regulated and sovereign buyers.
$3B+ raised · latest: Series C · 1.7B euros · Sept 2025 · backed by ASML, Nvidia, Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global
Job description
ABOUT MISTRAL
Mistral provides full-stack AI solutions: from frontier models to developer tools, applications, and compute. We partner with enterprises tackling the hardest problems—across high-stakes industries like finance, manufacturing, defense, healthcare, and the public sector—co-creating customized AI systems that they can run on their terms.
We are a dynamic, collaborative team passionate about AI and its potential to transform society. Our diverse workforce thrives in competitive environments and is committed to driving innovation. Our teams are distributed between Europe, North America, Asia and the Middle East. We are creative, low-ego and team-spirited.
THE ROLE
This role focuses on building and operating the ML platform that powers large-scale training, evaluation, and batch inference at Mistral AI. You will develop the infrastructure that enables researchers and engineers to run distributed GPU workloads reliably across clusters, hardware types, and regions.
You will work across the full ML lifecycle, from workload scheduling and capacity management to platform APIs, observability, and production operations. You will take ownership of critical systems and help turn complex infrastructure into reliable, self-service capabilities.
WHAT YOU WILL DO
- Build the ML Platform: Develop services, APIs, controllers, and tooling for training, evaluation, fine-tuning, and batch inference.
- Orchestrate GPU Workloads: Build systems for queueing, admission control, quotas, priorities, preemption, and topology-aware placement.
- Manage Compute Capacity: Improve how heterogeneous GPU resources are provisioned, allocated, and utilized across clusters.
- Enable Multi-Cluster Execution: Place workloads based on capacity, data locality, hardware requirements, and organizational priorities.
- Improve Researcher Experience: Create self-service workflows that make distributed workloads easy to launch, observe, debug, and reproduce.
- Optimize Performance: Improve GPU utilization, scheduling latency, workload startup time, throughput, and infrastructure efficiency.
- Build for Reliability: Develop observability, failure recovery, capacity planning, and operational tooling for critical ML workloads.
- Operate What You Build: Participate in on-call rotations and troubleshoot issues across applications, schedulers, networking, storage, and GPU infrastructure.
WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR
- Have 4+ years of experience in ML infrastructure, distributed systems, Kubernetes platform engineering, or a related field.
- Are proficient in Python or Go and comfortable working with production-grade distributed systems.
- Have strong Kubernetes knowledge, including controllers, operators, CRDs, scheduling, networking, storage, and resource management.
- Understand technologies such as Kueue, Karpenter, Volcano, and Kyverno, and the problems they address in workload scheduling, provisioning, and policy enforcement.
- Understand distributed ML workloads, including training, fine-tuning, evaluation, checkpointing, and batch inference.
- Are familiar with GPU infrastructure and technologies such as PyTorch, CUDA, NCCL, and high-performance networking.
- Understand concepts such as quotas, priorities, preemption, gang scheduling, topology awareness, and workload admission.
- Can diagnose performance and reliability problems across software, orchestration, networking, storage, and hardware.
- Care about developer experience and enjoy turning complex infrastructure into simple, reliable interfaces.
- Thrive in an ambiguous, fast-moving environment shaped by frontier AI research.
WHAT WE OFFER
We offer a comprehensive benefits package designed to support your well-being, growth, and work-life balance. Benefits vary by country and may include healthcare coverage, parental leave, retirement plans, relocation support, wellness programs, meal and transportation allowances, and other location-specific perks.
For the most up-to-date details on benefits available in your location, please refer to our Benefits page app.notion.com
PRIVACY POLICY
Your privacy matters to us. You can learn more about how we handle your personal data in our Applicant Privacy Policy legal.mistral.ai
Why work at Mistral
- Culture: Flat structure, high ownership, low ego, and a "builders, not order takers" mentality. The company values audacity, speed, rigor, and customer centricity.
- Remote/Hybrid/Office: Based in Paris (15 rue des Halles); relocation support and visa sponsorship offered. Specific remote/hybrid policy not detailed, but global team suggests flexibility.
- Notable perks and benefits (from careers page):
- 20 weeks paid parental leave for all birthing parents.
- 100% employer-sponsored medical, dental, and vision coverage for employees and dependents.
- 6% 401k match (US) / 5% pension contribution (UK).
- Childcare support (reserved daycare seats or financial assistance).
- Meal allowances and transportation support.
- Fitness and wellness subsidies.
- Relocation and settling-in services.
- Financial and career planning support.
- Team composition: 900+ employees from 30+ nationalities; 50% female leaders.
- Interview process: For science, product, and engineering roles: intro conversation → 2-5 technical exercises → 1-3 interviews (hiring manager + teammates) → values conversation → reference checks.