Compiler Frontend Engineer

Normal Computing Corporation • Palo Alto, CA

1d

About The Position

Normal Computing is an applied AI company working on foundational hardware and software for the semiconductor industry and AI infrastructure. The Compiler Frontend Engineer will focus on frontend and model bring-up for Normal’s compiler, which enables models to run on hardware that performs memory-bound large-model inference inside memory. The role extends the compiler’s intermediate representation (IR), operations, and lowering passes so that new LLM architectures are faithfully represented and supported before customer demand arises.

This is a research-adjacent position requiring close attention to the LLM literature and publication on behalf of Normal. Because the chip is pre-silicon, compiler bring-up will initially be validated using simulators and FPGA prototypes, preparing models to run when silicon becomes available. The engineer will work with backend compiler engineers and the LLM serving engineer to move new models from compiler support toward serving.

Requirements

• Hands-on ML compiler experience, including having written and shipped compiler passes.
• Deep familiarity with PyTorch internals, ideally including TorchDynamo, FX, and torch.export.
• Working knowledge of modern LLM architectures, including attention mechanisms, MoE routing, and quantization schemes.
• Patience and persistence in taking a new architecture from running to running correctly and efficiently.
• Comfort designing compiler infrastructure in a young codebase and extending an established codebase.
• Comfort building software for evolving hardware, from simulation through bring-up.
• Fluency in Python.
• Familiarity with C++ or Rust.

Nice To Haves

• Experience with other ML compilers, such as IREE, XLA, or TVM.
• Familiarity with other ML frameworks and graph formats, such as JAX or ONNX.
• Experience partitioning models across devices using tensor, pipeline, or expert parallelism.
• Experience with hardware-software co-design.
• Experience with non-standard or in-memory hardware targets.
• Contributions to open-source compiler or ML infrastructure projects.

Responsibilities

• Bring up frontend and mid-level compiler support for new LLM architectures, including attention variants and MoE routing schemes.
• Extend the compiler’s IR, operations, and lowering passes to faithfully represent new architectural primitives, and maintain correctness with test coverage.
• Represent new model quantization schemes and numeric formats so lowering preserves model accuracy.
• Track developments in LLM architectures and recommend which architectures the team should bring up next.
• Hand lowered programs to backend compiler engineers and collaborate with the LLM serving engineer to take new models from compiler support to serving.
• Validate model bring-up against simulators and FPGA prototypes before silicon is available.
• Follow relevant research literature closely and publish on behalf of Normal.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Education Level: No Education Listed