Machine Learning Engineer — Pre-training (LLM)

About the Institute of Foundation Models

We are a dedicated research lab for building, understanding, using, and risk-managing foundation models. Our mandate is to advance research, nurture the next generation of AI builders, and drive transformative contributions to a knowledge-driven economy.

As part of our team, you’ll have the opportunity to work on the core of cutting-edge foundation model training, alongside world-class researchers, data scientists, and engineers, tackling the most fundamental and impactful challenges in AI development. You will participate in the development of groundbreaking AI solutions that have the potential to reshape entire industries. Strategic and innovative problem-solving skills will be instrumental in establishing MBZUAI as a global hub for high-performance computing in deep learning, driving impactful discoveries that inspire the next generation of AI pioneers.

The Role

We’re looking for a distributed ML infrastructure engineer to help extend and scale our training systems. You’ll work side-by-side with world-class researchers and engineers to:

Extend distributed training frameworks (e.g., DeepSpeed, FSDP, FairScale, Horovod)

Implement distributed optimizers from mathematical specs

Build robust config + launch systems across multi-node, multi-GPU clusters

Own experiment tracking, metrics logging, and job monitoring for external visibility

Improve training system reliability, maintainability, and performance

Much of the work will support large-scale pre-training, and pre-training experience is required. Strong infrastructure and systems experience is what we value most.