Chief Architect

Architect Labs•Palo Alto, CA

10d

About The Position

Architect Labs is a frontier AI lab focused on custom silicon. The company partners with frontier labs, clouds and neoclouds, physical AI companies, and advanced fabs to tape out custom chips co-designed for next-generation AI workloads. Its goal is to compress end-to-end software-to-silicon timelines and maximize intelligence per watt and per dollar. The Chief Architect defines the architectural vision for new generations of AI compute silicon and reinvents how architectures are discovered, explored, and co-optimized with AI. The role owns critical decisions across compute, memory, interconnect, and hardware–software co-design. It also builds an architecture-search pipeline connecting workload analysis, design-space exploration, performance modeling, and PPA feedback to discover architectures that conventional methods may miss. The Chief Architect partners closely with ASIC and software leaders to bring promising ideas to silicon and takes hands-on ownership of the toughest tradeoffs. Architect Labs describes itself as a small, exceptional team across silicon, systems, software, and frontier AI, with team members who have led research teams at frontier AI labs and worked on complex SoCs. The company offers competitive compensation, meaningful equity, extraordinary technical ownership, and the opportunity to shape foundational computing systems alongside the team.

Requirements

Seasoned architect and technical leader, or equivalent, who has defined and shipped multiple industry-leading CPUs, GPUs, AI accelerators, or complex SoCs.
Deep command of computer architecture, performance modeling, memory systems, interconnects, power/performance/area tradeoffs, and software–hardware co-design.
Demonstrated architectural decisions that materially improved performance, efficiency, scalability, or product competitiveness in deployed silicon.
Ability to challenge assumptions, simplify complex systems, mentor engineers, and lead through technical credibility rather than hierarchy.
Comfort moving from first-principles exploration to detailed engineering decisions in a fast-moving, high-ownership environment.

Responsibilities

Define the architectural vision for new generations of AI compute silicon.
Reinvent how architectures are discovered, explored, and co-optimized with AI.
Own critical decisions across compute, memory, interconnect, and hardware–software co-design.
Build an architecture-search pipeline connecting workload analysis, design-space exploration, performance modeling, and PPA feedback.
Partner with ASIC and software leaders to bring strong architectural ideas to silicon.
Take hands-on ownership of difficult engineering tradeoffs.