Senior Staff System Software Engineer

About Graphcore

Graphcore is one of the world’s leading innovators in Artificial Intelligence compute. 

It is developing hardware, software and systems infrastructure that will unlock the next generation of AI breakthroughs and power the widespread adoption of AI solutions across every industry. 

As part of the SoftBank Group, Graphcore is a member of an elite family of companies responsible for some of the world’s most transformative technologies. Together, they share a bold vision: to enable Artificial Super Intelligence and ensure its benefits are accessible to everyone.  

Graphcore’s teams are drawn from diverse backgrounds and bring a broad range of skills and perspectives. A melting pot of AI research specialists, silicon designers, software engineers and systems architects, Graphcore enjoys a culture of continuous learning and constant innovation. 

Job Summary

As a member of the drivers and utilities team you will contribute to the planning, design, implementation and testing of low level kernel drivers and user space driver library code. You will be part of one of the two teams in the system software department (the firmware team being the other one) and report to the drivers and utilities team manager.

The Team

The drivers and utilities team forms part of the system software group – working closely with both software engineers developing our Poplar SDK and with silicon and hardware engineers developing Graphcore’s IPU solution. The drivers and utilities team develop custom control software on the host in kernel and user space. Our solutions enable our customers to get maximum performance and utility for our cutting-edge products.

Responsibilities and Duties

• Design, implement, test and document OS Kernel and Device Driver software at the highest standard using C/C++/Python programming languages

• Participate in agile development – working as part of a scrum team to develop the right software at pace including mentoring junior team members

• Drive technical discussions with your peers in software and hardware engineering, with architects and other stakeholders. Share innovative concepts with wider audiences.

• Hands-on during key product development phases involving close working with hardware and silicon engineering groups to enable fast time to market delivery

• Promote Graphcore values and culture

Candidate Profile

Essential:

• 7 - 10 year’s industry experience in software development using programming languages such as C/C++/Python

• OS Kernel and Device Driver development and deployment experience in Linux or Windows systems

• Good understanding of lower-level software stack and interactions with the hardware layer

• Possess effective problem-solving skills, familiar with a full suite of debug and performance analysis tools and techniques

• Experience with one or more of the following: PCIe, CPU, device drivers, SoC, firmware, and hardware/software integration

• Proactive in driving engineering collaboration & obtaining input to solve issues

• Proven ability to schedule own workload

• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, work well within a multinational team and with multinational customers. Excellent cultural awareness is essential.

Desirable

• Experience developing firmware or drivers for GPUs.

• Knowledge of CUDA or OpenCL

• Experience working on upstreaming of kernel code / contributing to Linux kernel.

• Exposure to integration with data centre / cloud service operations – for example integration with Kubernetes or open stack.

Benefits

In addition to a competitive salary, Graphcore offers flexible working, a generous annual leave policy, private medical insurance and health cash plan, a dental plan, pension (matched up to 5%), life assurance and income protection. We have a generous parental leave policy and an employee assistance programme (which includes health, mental wellbeing, and bereavement support). We offer a range of healthy food and snacks at our central Bristol office and have our own barista bar! We welcome people of different backgrounds and experiences; we’re committed to building an inclusive work environment that makes Graphcore a great home for everyone. We offer an equal opportunity process and understand that there are visible and invisible differences in all of us. We can provide a flexible approach to interview and encourage you to chat to us if you require any reasonable adjustments.

Applicants for this position must hold the right to work in the UK. Unfortunately at this time, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship or support for visa applications