---
title: 'Senior Embedded Performance Engineer at Fractile'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/senior-embedded-performance-engineer-fractile-london-6czxnt2hcygn'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-11'
---

# Senior Embedded Performance Engineer at Fractile

- **Company:** Fractile
- **Location:** London, United Kingdom / Bristol, United Kingdom
- **Posted:** 2025-12-10
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.eu.greenhouse.io/fractile/jobs/4725139101

## Job description

## About Fractile

Fractile was founded in 2022 on the bet that, eventually, the world’s most capable AI systems would be limited in their impact by the time taken to produce useful outputs. We bet everything on the logical conclusion: that the only way to truly unlock this latent value, to make speed viable at scale, was to radically re-invent the hardware that we run our frontier AI models on. Ever since, we have been building chips and systems that tackle this problem: how to efficiently generate output at thousands of tokens per second, while handling the complexity and capacity challenges of operating large models at very long contexts.

The workloads that push to the limits of the current frontier are already transformational; it is the technical and economic limits on inference speed that are constraining progress. The defining work of the 21st century will be marked by the engine of inference delivering immense and diffuse chains of intellectual inquiry, in drug discovery, in software engineering, in materials discovery, in any field where progress is driven by deep reasoning and intelligence to resolve complex problems.

## The Role

On the device, close to the metal, we write the runtime software that orchestrates work across the chip and runs performance-critical ML kernels. This is where performance gets real and the wins compound. Your work directly influences trade-offs for the silicon, system deployment, and the compiler.

You'll drive the first accelerator compute runs, evaluating performance on silicon, running early benchmarks, and feeding results back into the hardware and software roadmap.

## What you’ll do

- Write and optimise performance-critical ML kernels in C, with assembly where it matters (RISC-V and our own ISA)
- Build the low-level control paths that feed those kernels, including scheduling, synchronisation, and data movement
- Write targeted validation workloads and microbenchmarks to keep simulation and hardware behaviour aligned and performance measurable.
- Profile, benchmark, and track regressions so performance improvements are real and repeatable
- Work closely with simulation, hardware, ML, compiler, firmware, and runtime engineers in a tight loop, turning profiling data into architecture feedback and real performance wins.

## What we’re looking for

- Proven deeply embedded software experience
- Strong performance instincts. You can reason about low-level architecture, memory behaviour, and where the cycles are spent
- Excellent C, and a pragmatic approach to building high-quality, maintainable low-level code
- Comfortable writing and debugging optimised assembly (RISC-V ideal)
- Collaborative and high-ownership. You communicate clearly, move fast, and enjoy working through hard problems with others
- Computer Science, Electronic Engineering, Maths, Physics, or related degree and 3+ years of industry experience

## Nice to have

- Experience with GPUs or dedicated ML accelerators
- Rust and/or Python experience
- Experience with simulators (functional or performance) and writing validation or benchmarking workloads
- Familiarity with modern ML inference workloads

If you want to build the software that turns cutting-edge hardware capability into real throughput and low latency, come build it with us.

## What We Offer

- Competitive salary: A competitive salary reflective of your experience and the specialist nature of the role.
- Equity & Ownership: meaningful equity so everyone shares in the value creation
- Benefits: Private Medical, Dental and Vision, Contributory Pension, 25 Days holiday plus bank holidays and Life/Critical Illness Insurance.
- Diverse & fun office: we believe the hardest problems get solved by the broadest range of minds. We are committed to Equal Employment Opportunity through attracting and retaining a diverse team and building an inclusive environment.

Fractile is seeking to increase the clock speed of global progress, one chip at a time. We’ve recently raised $220M from investors including Founders Fund and Accel and our most important work lies ahead. Join us!

Export controls

Our work involves technologies subject to UK, US and other international export control regulations. Certain roles may require additional eligibility checks to ensure compliance with applicable law. We'll be transparent about this throughout the hiring process.

## About Fractile

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Fractile builds chips, systems, and software to radically improve the speed and cost of running frontier AI inference, targeting up to 25x faster performance at 1/10th the cost.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Series B)
- **Headquarters**: London & Bristol, United Kingdom
- **Founded**: 2022
- **Founders**: Walter Goodwin (CEO)

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI hardware acceleration, computer hardware manufacturing
- **Target customers**: B2B – enterprise cloud providers, AI labs, and organizations running large-scale frontier model inference
- **Mission**: "Build the engine that can power the next generation of AI" by removing every bottleneck to the fastest possible inference of the largest transformer networks.

## Products & Services
- **Fractile AI Accelerator Processor**: A new class of processor that physically interleaves memory and compute to deliver low latency and high throughput simultaneously. Designed to serve thousands of tokens per second to thousands of concurrent users at a fraction of the power and cost of existing hardware. (Hardware + full-stack software)

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly disclosed
- **Key Metric**: Total funding of **$243.8M** (per LinkedIn) or **$266.4M** (per CB Insights – conflicting reports); most recent round was a **$220M Series B** in May 2026 led by Accel, with participation from Factorial Funds and Founders Fund.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Accel, Factorial Funds, Founders Fund (Peter Thiel), Oxford Science Enterprises, Kindred Capital, Patrick Gelsinger (former Intel CEO), ARIA
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew **+171.4% YoY** to 66 employees; **+56.8% monthly LinkedIn follower growth**; **53 active job postings** (up 2550% year-over-year); expanding into a new hardware test site and growing offices in Bristol and London.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Full-stack approach**: Team spans transistor-level circuit design up to cloud inference server logic, enabling tight integration across silicon, systems, and software.
- **Novel architecture**: Interleaving memory and compute solves the memory-wall bottleneck that limits existing hardware, allowing simultaneous low latency and high throughput for frontier models.
- **Focus on inference (not training):** Addresses the exploding demand for token processing (10x/year growth) with a purpose-built solution for inference workloads.

## Strategic Focus
- Scale the engineering team across hardware and software disciplines (Rust, ML runtime, silicon design, board test, manufacturing operations).
- Expand physical infrastructure (new hardware test site in Bristol).
- Deploy the first generation of processors to enable new workloads like long-context autonomous agents and real-time AI reasoning.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Deeply collaborative, no silos, no handoffs – engineers work across the full stack from transistor to cloud in a flat, mission-driven environment.
- **Locations**: Modern, open-plan offices in central Bristol and central London with excellent transport links.
- **Growth**: High-growth startup with strong funding and a clear trajectory; opportunity to work on one of the most impactful technical challenges in AI.
- **Team**: Composed of world-class technologists, many from companies like Graphcore, Imagination Technologies, and Cisco.
- **Remote/Hybrid**: Not explicitly stated, but hardware-focused roles (silicon, test, manufacturing) suggest a strong on-site presence; software roles may offer flexibility.

## Sources
1. [fractile.ai](https://www.fractile.ai/) – Company website
2. [fractile.ai/about](https://www.fractile.ai/about) – About page, team, culture
3. [fractile.ai/jobs](https://www.fractile.ai/jobs) – Open positions and work philosophy
4. [uk.linkedin.com/company/fractile](https://uk.linkedin.com/company/fractile) – LinkedIn company page (funding, headcount, growth)
5. [cbinsights.com/company/fractile](https://www.cbinsights.com/company/fractile) – CB Insights profile (funding details, patents, headquarters)

## Other roles at Fractile

- [Infrastructure Software Engineering – Platform & Build 1](https://feeny.ai/job/infrastructure-software-engineering-platform-build-1-fractile-london-8py3rwe9a22a) — London, United Kingdom
- [Lead RTL Designer (PPA Experience)](https://feeny.ai/job/lead-rtl-designer-ppa-experience-fractile-london-v7tb393epzj8) — London, United Kingdom
- [Infrastructure Engineer (Linux)](https://feeny.ai/job/infrastructure-engineer-linux-fractile-london-wf39d8qcrs18) — London, United Kingdom / Bristol, United Kingdom
- [Product & Yield Engineer (Data-focused)](https://feeny.ai/job/product-yield-engineer-data-focused-fractile-london-01d227xazs8j) — London, United Kingdom
- [Product & Yield Engineer (Data-focused)](https://feeny.ai/job/product-yield-engineer-data-focused-fractile-bristol-0f9p7n1xjmmp) — Bristol, United Kingdom
- [DRAM Product Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/dram-product-engineer-fractile-bristol-nnksz0zaqnsd) — Bristol, United Kingdom
- [Engineering Manager - Compilers](https://feeny.ai/job/engineering-manager-compilers-fractile-london-7jmh8904r5mz) — London, United Kingdom / Bristol, United Kingdom
- [Developer Experience / DevEx](https://feeny.ai/job/developer-experience-devex-fractile-london-4r0qtvaa55gk) — London, United Kingdom
- [Member of Technical Staff - Security Engineering](https://feeny.ai/job/member-of-technical-staff-security-engineering-fractile-london-kdbxzfb0y24f) — London, United Kingdom / Bristol, United Kingdom
- [Developer Experience / DevEx](https://feeny.ai/job/developer-experience-devex-fractile-bristol-2wmefvt5bhap) — Bristol, United Kingdom