--- title: 'Senior AI Application Engineer - LLM & VLM Enablement at Axelera AI' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ai-application-engineer-llm-vlm-enablement-axelera-ai-europe-qdp82h8cm5ax' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-10-31' --- # Senior AI Application Engineer - LLM & VLM Enablement at Axelera AI - **Company:** Axelera AI - **Location:** Europe - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** remote - **Posted:** 2026-10-26 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-31 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/axelera/c3a8c38b-3777-44ce-871f-b38a4b2facbc ## Job description ## About Us [Axelera AI](https://www.axelera.ai) is not your regular deep-tech company. We are creating the next-generation AI platform to support anyone who wants to help advancing humanity and improve the world around us. In just five years, we have raised a total of $450 million and have built a world-class team of 250+ employees (including 60+ PhDs with more than 40,000 citations), both remotely from 21 different countries and with offices in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, the UK, headquartered at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Netherlands. We have also launched our Metis™ AI Platform, which achieves a 3-5x increase in efficiency and performance, and have visibility into a strong business pipeline exceeding $100 million. Our unwavering commitment to innovation has firmly established us as a global industry pioneer. Are you up for the challenge? Position Overview As a Senior AI Application Engineer in the Model Enablement team (Application Software), you will own LLM and VLM support on Metis and Europa AIPUs, from studying new models to shipping them in the Voyager SDK. The role combines LLM/VLM knowledge with solid software engineering. Our team uses AI coding agents in daily work, and you will use them to build, test and verify your own work. We also welcome experienced field application engineers, technical leads and engineering managers who want to return to hands-on engineering. Experience in planning, delegating and reviewing work transfers well to working with AI agents. Key responsibilities: - LLM/VLM study: Study new LLM and VLM families and architectures (for example mixture-of-experts, small VLMs, new attention and decoding schemes). Prototype and profile them on Metis and Europa, and decide how they should run on our hardware. - Productization: Turn your results and our ML research group's results into supported Voyager SDK features, with stable APIs, tests, documentation and release gates. - Model-side contracts: For each LLM/VLM building block, own the PyTorch reference with quantization baked in, the weight mapping, and one contract that lists every input, output, weight and persistent state (such as a paged KV cache), and hand that contract to the compiler team. The runtime and tests use the same definition. - Pipeline integration: Bring LLM and VLM serving into the Voyager SDK pipeline builder: prefill and decode, KV-cache management, streaming text output and multimodal inputs. - Quality: With the regression and quantization owners, measure accuracy against the floating-point reference, and close or explain each gap. - LLM/VLM bring-up platform: Extend the model enablement platform for LLM and VLM bring-up: environments with access to the compiler, runtime and real hardware (for example through MCP tools), closed-loop runs that apply a change, measure accuracy and speed against the reference and repeat, and evaluations that score each run. - GenAI direction: Recommend what the Voyager SDK needs for GenAI, agents and speech on edge devices, and which model zoo demos show it best. Qualifications: Essential - 5+ years of software engineering experience, with at least 2 years on ML inference, ML systems or ML tooling. - Solid understanding of transformer inference: attention variants, KV caching, prefill versus decode, sampling, tokenization, and how a VLM joins a vision encoder to a language model. - Working knowledge of LLM quantization (weight-only and weight-activation schemes, calibration, outlier handling), and the ability to tell a quantization loss from an implementation bug. - Strong Python and PyTorch, and experience shipping production-quality software. - Daily use of AI coding agents on real codebases, with good judgment about when to verify or reject their output. - Ability to turn research code and hardware constraints into a practical design. ## Preferred - Experience with inference engines or serving stacks (for example llama.cpp, vLLM, ONNX Runtime GenAI, ExecuTorch). - Experience with kernel development or a tensor compiler (for example Triton, TVM or MLIR), or with profiling models on accelerator hardware. - Experience with speech (ASR, TTS) or agentic applications on embedded devices. - Experience building evaluation or testing harnesses for ML systems or AI agents, or tool-calling agents (for example MCP servers). Location We offer a flexible working arrangement, with options to: - Work from one of our Axelera AI offices (Leuven in Belgium, Amsterdam and Eindhoven in the Netherlands, Zurich in Switzerland, Florence and Milan in Italy or Bristol in the United Kingdom) if you're already based in the vicinity. - Work fully remotely from any European country (incl. the UK) you are already in. - Relocate with us and work from Italy (Florence or Milan) or the Netherlands (Amsterdam or Eindhoven). Kindly note that priority will be given to candidates who are [interested in being] based in Belgium or Italy. ## What we offer This is your chance to shape and be part of a dynamic, fast-growing, international organization. We offer an attractive compensation package, including a pension plan, extensive employee insurances and the option to get company shares. An open culture that supports creativity and continual innovation is awaiting you. Collaborative ownership and freedom with responsibility is characteristic for the way we act and work as a team. At Axelera AI, we wholeheartedly embrace equal opportunity and hold diversity in the highest regard. Our steadfast commitment is to cultivate a warm and inclusive environment that empowers and celebrates every member of our team. We welcome applicants from all backgrounds to join us in shaping the future of AI. Axelera AI may at times work with external parties (such as recruiters, headhunters, or executive search firms) to support both publicly posted and confidential searches. Our hiring process never involves any payment from candidates, and we will never require you to use a particular paid service to be considered for a role. If you have been approached by someone on our behalf and want to confirm it’s legitimate, please contact us directly at careers@axelera.ai. ## About Axelera AI ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Axelera AI develops cutting-edge AI hardware and software platforms for accelerating inference at the edge, using proprietary digital in-memory computing technology. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series C) - **Headquarters**: Eindhoven, Netherlands - **Founded**: 2021 - **Founders**: Not publicly listed on primary sources ## Core Business - **Primary industry/industries**: AI Hardware (Semiconductors), Edge AI Inference, Computer Vision - **Target customers**: B2B, Enterprise, and SMBs across industrial manufacturing, security & surveillance, retail, robotics, and healthcare - **Mission or purpose statement**: "To lead the democratization of Artificial Intelligence, offering faster, easy-to-use AI acceleration while minimizing power and cost, to simplify AI at the Edge." [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/our-story) ## Products & Services - **Metis® AIPU (AI Processing Unit)**: A family of edge inference accelerators starting at 214 TOPs, available in M.2 and PCIe form factors (1-AIPU and 4-AIPU cards). Delivers 15 TOPs/W energy efficiency. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/) - **Europa® AIPU**: A higher-performance AI accelerator (629 TOPs) for demanding edge and near-edge workloads, setting a new industry benchmark for performance, power efficiency, and affordability. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/) - **Titania® Chiplet**: A future chiplet designed to scale the D-IMC architecture from edge to cloud. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/our-story) - **Voyager® SDK**: A software development kit with 100+ pre-optimized models, enabling deployment from model to production in hours, not weeks. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/) - **Metis AI Platform**: Complete edge AI systems (M.2 and PCIe accelerator cards) bundling the Metis AIPU with the Voyager SDK for computer vision applications. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/) ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed - **Total Funding**: Over $450 million in equity, grants, and venture debt since founding (July 2021). This includes a $250M+ Series C (the largest investment ever in an EU AI semiconductor company), led by Innovation Industries, with new investors BlackRock and SiteGround Capital. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/our-story) - **Key Metric**: Total funding of $468.21M (per CB Insights). [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/axelera-ai) - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Innovation Industries, European Innovation Council Fund, Invest-NL, Samsung Catalyst Fund, Verve Ventures, CDP Venture Capital SGR, Bitfury, Federal Holding and Investment Company of Belgium (SFPIM), imec, BlackRock, SiteGround Capital. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/our-story) - **Growth Signals**: Ranked #3 in the Emerging Enterprise (201-999 Employees) category on Fast Company’s 2026 Most Innovative Companies list. Has taped out four chips since founding. Announced the Europa AIPU and Titania chiplet. Secured up to €61.6m from the EuroHPC DARE project. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/our-story) ## Competitive Advantages - **Proprietary Digital In-Memory Computing (D-IMC)**: Performs matrix-vector multiplications in-place, eliminating data movement and delivering 50+ TOPs per core at FP32-equivalent accuracy. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/) - **Industry-Leading Energy Efficiency**: 15 TOPs/W, enabling high-performance AI inference at the edge without power or thermal constraints. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/) - **Full-Stack Solution**: Combines purpose-built hardware (AIPUs) with the Voyager SDK (100+ models, post-training quantization) for rapid deployment, significantly reducing time-to-value compared to GPU-based alternatives. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/) - **Scalable Architecture**: D-IMC and RISC-V dataflow architecture scales from edge to cloud via the Titania chiplet roadmap. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/our-story) ## Strategic Focus - **Democratizing AI**: Making high-performance AI inference accessible, affordable, and energy-efficient for any environment (edge to cloud). [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/our-story) - **Commercial Expansion**: Scaling global commercial growth following the $250M+ Series C, with a focus on building out sales and field application engineering teams in EMEA and the Americas. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/careers) - **Ecosystem & Partnerships**: Recently announced six new partnerships to expand the edge AI ecosystem. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/) - **Product Roadmap**: Scaling the D-IMC platform from edge (Metis) to near-edge (Europa) to cloud (Titania chiplet), targeting a full range of inference use cases. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/our-story) ## Why Work Here - **High-Growth Environment**: A well-funded deep-tech startup (over $450M raised) with rapid commercial traction, ranked #3 on Fast Company’s 2026 Most Innovative Companies list. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/careers) - **Global & Remote-First Culture**: 248+ talented colleagues from 34 nationalities across 18 locations, with a strong remote/hybrid work policy. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/careers) - **Cutting-Edge Technology**: Work on proprietary D-IMC and RISC-V dataflow architecture, with a roadmap spanning edge to cloud. The team includes 39 PhDs. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/careers) - **Benefits**: Remote/flexible work, premium insurance, commute benefit, team-building activities, premium pension, work-life balance, cutting-edge equipment, fresh fruit at the office, and modern facilities. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/careers) - **Values-Driven Culture**: Values include "Think," "Focus on the Customer," "Move Fast," "Communicate Openly," and "Agree & Commit." Emphasis on freedom with responsibility. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/careers) - **Diverse & International**: 34 nationalities, average age 50+, with offices in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Italy, the UK, and headquarters in Eindhoven. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/careers) ## Sources 1. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/) 2. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/our-story) 3. [axelera.ai](https://axelera.ai/careers) 4. [cbinsights.com](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/axelera-ai) 5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/axelera) ## Other roles at Axelera AI - [Director of Marketing, Asia-Pacific & Japan](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-marketing-asia-pacific-japan-axelera-ai-india-etsgswbs0z8g) — India - [Director - Sales Operations Americas](https://feeny.ai/job/director-sales-operations-americas-axelera-ai-united-states-ar1f1m4307m9) — United States - [Staff AI Application Engineer - Heterogeneous Computing](https://feeny.ai/job/staff-ai-application-engineer-heterogeneous-computing-axelera-ai-europe-gdtk46txt4fk) — Europe - [Stage - Perito Elettronico](https://feeny.ai/job/stage-perito-elettronico-axelera-ai-florence-gxd0t9xq208q) — Florence - [Career Day Start Up - Politecnico Milano](https://feeny.ai/job/career-day-start-up-politecnico-milano-axelera-ai-milan-jw6m1nwwt5rt) — Milan, Italy - [Partner Marketing Manager, Global Accounts](https://feeny.ai/job/partner-marketing-manager-global-accounts-axelera-ai-united-states-b134rcq68mbm) — United States - [Developer Relations and Community Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/developer-relations-and-community-manager-axelera-ai-europe-f0e7vjhj3p4w) — Europe - [(Senior) Director of Sales - Enterprise AI](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-director-of-sales-enterprise-ai-axelera-ai-california-4t1n391zg2pp) — California - [(Senior) Field Application Engineer - India](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-field-application-engineer-india-axelera-ai-india-tjpzd0600zy2) — India - [Ecosystem Integration Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/ecosystem-integration-engineer-axelera-ai-taiwan-8ymx2171c956) — Taiwan