---
title: 'Senior AI R&D Engineer - Performance - Pre-training (f/m/d) at Aleph Alpha'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ai-r-d-engineer-performance-pre-training-f-m-d-aleph-alpha-heidelberg-63c77hha52h8'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-10-18'
---

# Senior AI R&D Engineer - Performance - Pre-training (f/m/d) at Aleph Alpha

- **Company:** Aleph Alpha
- **Location:** Heidelberg, Germany
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-10-15
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-10-18
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/AlephAlpha/2faca6ec-69bd-4e04-b055-05f24ddf0f4d/application

**Skills:** Python, PyTorch, Parallel Systems, Distributed Systems, CUDA, NCCL, MPI, PyTorch Profiler, Nsight Systems, Nsight Compute, TorchTitan, Megatron-LM, DeepSpeed, MXFP4, MXFP8, NVSHMEM, CUDA IPC, Transformer-based model training

> Engineer systems to train foundation models at scale, maximizing hardware utilization and throughput on large GPU clusters. The role involves optimizing training loops, configuring distributed strategies, and partnering with researchers to define hardware-efficient model architectures.

## Job description

## Our Mission

Aleph Alpha is one of the few companies in Europe doing serious foundation model pre-training like our recently released [Kolibri-1 model](https://huggingface.co/Aleph-Alpha/Kolibri-1). Our customers - in finance, manufacturing, public administration - need models that understand German, meet European regulatory requirements, and work reliably in high-stakes settings. We're building that in Heidelberg.

We are hiring a Senior Performance Engineer to grow our pre-training efficiency team. If you are excited about making models fast and scaling them to thousands of GPUs, this is the role for you!

## Team Culture

At Aleph Alpha, we foster a culture built on ownership, autonomy, and empowerment. Teams and individual contributors are trusted to take responsibility for their work and drive meaningful impact. We maintain a flat organizational structure with efficient, supportive management that enables quick decision‑making, open communication, and a strong sense of shared purpose.

About the role: You will engineer the systems required to train foundation models at scale. Your objective is to maximize hardware utilization and training throughput on our large-scale GPU clusters (thousands of NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs). You will work at the intersection of deep learning frameworks, distributed systems, and GPU microarchitecture, eliminating bottlenecks from the Python layer down to the GPU kernel. This role is for Aleph Alpha Research GmbH. Your responsibilities:

- End-to-End Optimization: Profile training loops using PyTorch Profiler, Nsight Systems and Nsight Compute to identify system- and kernel-level bottlenecks in order to maximize model throughput.
- Distributed Strategy and Topology: Configure and tune composite parallelism strategies (e.g. TP, DP, HSDP/FSDP, EP), optimizing load balance, minimizing critical-path bottlenecks, and managing communication-to-computation trade-offs for large-scale LLM training.
- Hardware-Aware Modeling: Partner with AI Researchers to define model architectures for hardware efficiency without compromising convergence.

## Your Profile

## Basic Qualifications

- Are proficient in Python and the PyTorch library.
- Have a strong engineering background in parallel and/or distributed systems with proven track record of excellence.
- Have hands-on experience with modern machine learning techniques (especially large language models and their life cycle).
- Deeply understand the CUDA programming model.
- Have experience in distributed programming with APIs like NCCL or MPI.
- Have experience analysing profiling traces with tools such as PyTorch Profiler and Nvidia Nsight.
- Please note this role requires regular on-site collaboration in Heidelberg as a member of the Training Efficiency Team.

## Preferred Qualifications

- Contributions to modern distributed training frameworks (e.g., TorchTitan, Megatron-LM, DeepSpeed).
- Familiarity with low-precision training formats (MXFP4, MXFP8) and their impact on numerical stability and throughput.
- A deep understanding of NCCL communication primitives, NVSHMEM or CUDA IPC and their performance.
- A proven track record of implementing and optimising modern transformer-based model training.
- A proven track record working on the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture.

## Compensation and Benefits

- Become part of an AI revolution!
- 30 days of paid vacation
- Access to a variety of fitness & wellness offerings via [Wellhub](https://wellhub.com/de-de/)
- Mental health support through [nilo.health](http://nilo.health)
- Substantially subsidized company pension plan for your future security
- Subsidized Germany-wide transportation ticket
- Budget for additional technical equipment
- Flexible working hours for better work-life balance and hybrid working model
- [JobRad®](https://www.jobrad.org/) Bike Lease

## About Aleph Alpha

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Aleph Alpha is a German AI startup that develops sovereign large language models (SLLMs) for enterprises and governments, emphasizing data sovereignty, regulatory compliance, and domain-specific performance.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B; acquired by Cohere in a landmark agreement)
- **Headquarters**: Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
- **Founded**: 2019
- **Founders**: Jonas Andrulis, Samuel Weinbach

## Core Business
- **Primary industry/industries**: Artificial Intelligence (Generative AI, Large Language Models), Enterprise Software, Government Technology
- **Target customers**: B2B exclusively — enterprises in industry, public sector, and defense where data sovereignty and domain expertise are critical
- **Mission or purpose statement**: "We empower enterprises and public institutions to transform their most critical knowledge." The company operates under the principles of Trust, Responsibility, and Sovereignty.

## Products & Services
- **Luminous LLM**: A family of large language models designed for enterprise and government use, with a focus on transparency of sources used to generate results. The models are trained on customer-specific domains (legal, administrative, industrial, scientific) and run exclusively on European infrastructure.
- **Sovereign Large Language Models (SLLMs)**: Custom-built, secure language models tailored to a customer's domain and workflows, paired with custom evaluation frameworks to ensure performance before deployment.
- **AI Agent Solutions**: Deployed for tasks like retrieving verifiable insights from sensitive documentation (e.g., reducing search time by 90% at a global chip manufacturer) and AI-powered requirements engineering (e.g., 40% time savings on RFQ processing for an automotive supplier).
- **AI Assistant for Government**: A sovereign AI assistant deployed in a government agency, empowering 80,000 users to streamline administrative processes.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Annual Revenue of $100M (as of latest data); Total Funding of $633.6M (across 6 rounds, including a $500M Series B led by Schwarz Group, Bosch Ventures, and others)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Cohere (acquirer), Schwarz Group, Bosch Ventures, 468 Capital, LEA Partners, Lakestar, EarlyBird, and 18+ other investors. Key partners include global chip manufacturers, automotive suppliers, and government agencies.
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount of 275 employees (+17% YoY); operates in 9 countries (Germany, Switzerland, Romania, Nigeria, Brazil, France, Peru, Austria, Netherlands); acquired thingsTHINKING (April 2025); landmark agreement with Cohere for operational realignment and partnership.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Data Sovereignty & Compliance**: All models run on European infrastructure and are trained in accordance with EU law, making them uniquely suited for regulated industries (defense, public sector, legal) where data cannot leave the continent.
- **Domain-Specific Customization**: Unlike general-purpose models, Aleph Alpha's SLLMs are trained on a customer's own domain knowledge and workflows, with custom evaluation frameworks that prove performance before deployment.
- **Proven Track Record in Sensitive Environments**: Demonstrated success in government (80,000 users), defense, and industrial settings where precision and reliability are non-negotiable.
- **End-to-End Partnership Model**: The company co-builds solutions with customers from first use case through production deployment, ensuring the technology fits existing processes.

## Strategic Focus
- **Current priorities**: Deepening the partnership with Cohere for operational realignment and scaling; expanding sovereign AI solutions for European enterprises and governments; continuing to build domain-specific SLLMs for legal, administrative, industrial, and scientific sectors.
- **Direction for growth**: Focus on mission-critical, sensitive environments where general-purpose AI fails; expanding across European public sector and defense; leveraging the Cohere partnership for broader reach and resources.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture highlights**: The company emphasizes collaboration, openness, and a deep commitment to responsibility. The team is described as international, with engineers, scientists, and innovators working across four German locations. The mission is centered on "Trust. Responsibility. Sovereignty."
- **Remote/hybrid/office policy**: Based on job postings, roles are primarily on-site in Heidelberg, with some flexibility. The company has locations in Heidelberg, Speyer, and other German cities.
- **Notable perks or engineering culture**: Strong focus on research and engineering (33% of workforce in technical roles, 8% in research). The tech stack includes TensorFlow, Kubernetes, Flask, MLflow, and more. The company has filed 4 patents related to AI model compression and performance. Recent departures of key executives (e.g., Co-CEO Ilhan Scheer, COO Ben Oppl) suggest a period of transition, but the company is actively hiring for senior AI research and engineering roles.
- **Employee ratings**: 3.2/5.0 on employer review platforms (Work-Life: 3.5, Compensation: 3.5, Culture: 3.1, Career: 3.5). The company has 15 active job postings, with a strong focus on senior AI researchers and software engineers.

## Sources
1. [Aleph Alpha Website](https://aleph-alpha.com/)
2. [Aleph Alpha Careers Page](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/AlephAlpha)
3. [LinkedIn Company Profile](https://www.linkedin.com/company/aleph-alpha/)
4. [CB Insights Company Profile](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/aleph-alpha)

## Other roles at Aleph Alpha

- [Senior AI Researcher: LLM post-training for hallucination reduction (f/m/d)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ai-researcher-llm-post-training-for-hallucination-reduction-f-m-d-aleph-zap2g8gcb5g4) — Heidelberg, Germany
- [Senior AI Researcher- Pre-training (f/m/d)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ai-researcher-pre-training-f-m-d-aleph-alpha-heidelberg-s5v2ewqeev20) — Heidelberg, Germany
- [Senior AI R&D Engineer – Model Training  (f/m/d)](https://feeny.ai/job/senior-ai-r-d-engineer-model-training-f-m-d-aleph-alpha-heidelberg-xqr3y48gda71) — Heidelberg, Germany