Sr. Manager - SOC Virtual Platform Modeling, ML Acceleration - Annapurna Labs

Amazon•Cupertino, CA

About The Position

Custom ML acceleration SoCs (System on Chips) are the brains behind AWS’s Trainium Machine Learning servers. Our team builds functional models of these SoCs and the servers they power. Our models are used by AWS internal teams for silicon verification and to left-shift software development (as a virtual platform). We are looking for a leader who can quickly scale the team and begin executing on a performance model- someone who can drive both the team vision and hiring. Great candidates will have deep hands-on modeling experience, with a startup-like can-do mentality - the team is nimble, and we need a leader who can jump in and lead by example. Annapurna Labs, our organization within AWS, designs and deploys some of the largest custom silicon in the world, with many subsystems that must all be modeled and tested with high quality. Our SoC model is critical for both the SoC development process and for production software development. You’ll collaborate with many internal customers who depend on your models to be effective themselves, and you'll work closely with these teams to push the boundaries of how we're using modeling to build successful products. Although we are building machine learning chips, no machine learning background is needed for this role. This role spans modeling of the ML and management regions of our chips, and you’ll dip your toes into both. You’ll be able to ramp up on ML as part of this role, and any ML knowledge that’s required can be learned on-the-job. We're changing an industry. We're searching for individuals who are ready for this challenge, who want to reach beyond what is possible today. Come join us and build the future of machine learning! Trainium3 (https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/aws/trainium-3-ultraserver-faster-ai-training-lower-cost) production software development leveraged our virtual platform before silicon arrived. This enabled running a full training workload within 12 hours once silicon arrived, and getting servers in customer hands in mere months. While these are amazing feats, there’s significantly more value the modeling team can provide - we need to scale, with the right leadership, to enable this. We are looking for an SDM who loves getting their hands dirty, but enjoys management and driving high-performance teams. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses. AWS Utility Computing (UC) provides product innovations — from foundational services such as Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), to consistently released new product innovations that continue to set AWS’s services and features apart in the industry. As a member of the UC organization, you’ll support the development and management of Compute, Database, Storage, Internet of Things (IoT), Platform, and Productivity Apps services in AWS, including support for customers who require specialized security solutions for their cloud services. Here at AWS, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon (gender diversity) conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness. We value work-life harmony. Achieving success at work should never come at the expense of sacrifices at home, which is why we strive for flexibility as part of our working culture. When we feel supported in the workplace and at home, there’s nothing we can’t achieve in the cloud. We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional. Amazon values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying.

Requirements

7+ years of engineering team management experience
15+ years of non-internship professional software development experience writing functional or performance models for SoCs, CPUs, GPUs, and/or ASICs
Familiarity with SoC, CPU, GPU, and/or ASIC architecture and micro-architecture
Experience building large-scale, OOP software projects in C++ and/or SystemC

Nice To Haves

Experience designing and developing large scale, high-traffic applications
Experience hiring, developing and promoting engineering talent
Experience running metrics reports, analyzing data to identify problems and using data analysis to generate and explain metrics
Experience in computer architecture, or experience with Machine Learning and Large Language Model fundamentals, including architecture, training/inference lifecycles, and optimization of model execution
Experience building high-performance / multi-threaded / distributed software systems
Experience developing and calibrating performance models for custom silicon chips
Experience building test regression and continuous integration frameworks and tooling
Experience using AWS EC2 servers for development

Responsibilities

Lead the team responsible for developing SoC models end-to-end, including model architecture, integration with other model or infrastructure components, testing, and debug
Mentor and develop the team, while hiring top talent to continue scaling
Lead new product and feature development both at a high level and in the trenches - this is a hands-on role, and you’ll be expected dive into technical issues and the codebase head-first
Work closely with architecture, RTL design, design verification, emulation, and software teams to build, debug, and deploy your models
Focus on customer needs and use-cases to improve our models’ quality, delivery speed, and usefulness within AWS
Develop mechanisms and infrastructure to enable the team to build high quality, maintainable, well documented, modular, and testable software