Member of Technical Staff, Pre-training Systems

magic.dev· Engineering
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📍 San FranciscoFullTime💰 USD 225K–550K/yr

About this role

Magic’s mission is to build safe AGI that accelerates humanity’s progress on the world’s most important problems. We believe the most promising path to safe AGI lies in automating research and code generation to improve models and solve alignment more reliably than humans can alone. Our approach combines frontier-scale pre-training, domain-specific RL, ultra-long context, and inference-time compute to achieve this goal.

About the role

As a Software Engineer on the Pre-training Systems team, you will design and operate the distributed infrastructure that trains Magic’s long-context models at scale.

This role focuses on large-scale model training across massive GPU clusters. You will work at the boundary between deep learning and distributed systems, ensuring that training runs are performant, reliable, and reproducible under extreme scale.

Magic’s long-context models create non-trivial systems challenges: sustained memory pressure, communication overhead across thousands of devices, long-running jobs that must survive failures, and efficient sequence packing under hardware constraints. You will own the systems that make large-scale pre-training stable and fast.

What you’ll work on

  • Scale distributed training across large GPU clusters (data, tensor, pipeline parallelism)

  • Optimize communication patterns and gradient synchronization

  • Improve checkpointing, fault tolerance, and job recovery systems

  • Profile and eliminate performance bottlenecks across compute, networking, and storage

  • Improve experiment reproducibility and orchestration workflows

  • Increase hardware utilization and training throughput

  • Collaborate with Kernels and Research to align model architecture with systems realities

What we’re looking for

  • Strong software engineering and distributed systems fundamentals

  • Experience training large models in multi-node GPU environments

  • Deep understanding of parallelism strategies and performance trade-offs

  • Experience debugging cross-layer issues in production ML systems

  • Strong ownership mindset and ability to operate critical infrastructure

  • Track record of improving performance or reliability of large-scale systems

Compensation, benefits, and perks (US):

  • Annual salary range: $225K - $550K

  • Equity is a significant part of total compensation, in addition to salary

  • 401(k) plan with 6% salary matching

  • Generous health, dental and vision insurance for you and your dependents

  • Unlimited paid time off

  • Visa sponsorship and relocation stipend to bring you to SF, if possible

  • A small, fast-paced, highly focused team

Magic strives to be the place where high-potential individuals can do their best work. We value quick learning and grit just as much as skill and experience.

Our culture

  • Integrity. Words and actions should be aligned

  • Hands-on. At Magic, everyone is building

  • Teamwork. We move as one team, not N individuals

  • Focus. Safely deploy AGI. Everything else is noise

  • Quality. Magic should feel like magic

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the salary for the Member of Technical Staff, Pre-training Systems role at magic.dev?
The listed salary for this Member of Technical Staff, Pre-training Systems position at magic.dev is USD 225K–550K/yr. This is an FullTime role.
Where is the Member of Technical Staff, Pre-training Systems position at magic.dev located?
This Member of Technical Staff, Pre-training Systems role at magic.dev is based in San Francisco. The position is listed as on-site or hybrid. Check the full job description or apply directly to confirm the work arrangement.
Is the Member of Technical Staff, Pre-training Systems role at magic.dev full-time or part-time?
This is listed as a FullTime position. It is posted as a Member of Technical Staff, Pre-training Systems role in the Engineering department at magic.dev.
Which team or department does the Member of Technical Staff, Pre-training Systems at magic.dev belong to?
This Member of Technical Staff, Pre-training Systems position is part of the Engineering department at magic.dev. See the full job description for more information about the team structure and responsibilities.
How do I apply for the Member of Technical Staff, Pre-training Systems position at magic.dev?
Click the "Apply Now" button on this page. You will be redirected to magic.dev's official application portal hosted on ashby where you can submit your application directly.
When was the Member of Technical Staff, Pre-training Systems job at magic.dev posted?
This Member of Technical Staff, Pre-training Systems position at magic.dev was posted on Feb 28, 2026. Apply as soon as possible — early applications are often reviewed first.
Member of Technical Staff, Pre-training Systems
magic.dev · 💰 USD 225K–550K/yr
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