Thinking Machines Lab
AI & Machine LearningDirect Ashby career site

Technical Program Manager, Supercomputing

Pay
$350,000 – $475,000 per year
Location
San Francisco, CA · On-site
Job type
Full-time
Level
Lead / Staff
Listed
22 days ago

Skills & highlights for this role

  • compute resource allocation
  • distributed systems
  • machine learning infrastructure
  • high-performance computing
  • capacity forecasting

Also useful

  • GPU clusters
  • distributed training
  • workload scheduling

Stated benefits & perks

  • Health
  • Dental
  • Vision
  • Unlimited pto
  • Parental leave

About the Role

Compute allocation is a technical judgment problem. Research teams have different goals, workloads have different requirements, and available resources rarely match every need at once. Progress depends on understanding those constraints and finding ways to accomplish more within them.

In this role, you’ll own compute allocation and help us make better use of our supercomputing resources. You’ll work closely with researchers and infrastructure engineers to understand demand, evaluate competing needs, and translate research priorities into practical allocation decisions. You’ll investigate where constraints limit progress and help teams find workable alternatives.

Teaching is central to this work. You’ll help researchers plan their compute needs, understand allocation decisions, and reason through tradeoffs themselves. By working through real workloads, explaining your decisions, and developing useful tools and guidance, you’ll make specialized knowledge available to more of the team.

This role is a good fit if you enjoy working deeply with technical constraints, making decisions under uncertainty, and helping others develop their judgment.

What You’ll Do

  • Own compute allocation. Understand current and upcoming demand, develop allocation plans with technical leads, and carry decisions through to execution.
  • Optimize within constraints. Work through tradeoffs across capacity, hardware suitability, workload size, timing, and dependencies. Help teams adapt their plans as requirements and resources change.
  • Improve productive use of compute. Partner with researchers and engineers to investigate the gap between allocated resources and useful work. Identify opportunities to improve scheduling, workload placement, and utilization.
  • Teach teams to plan and use compute well. Help researchers estimate their needs, understand available options, and recognize the consequences of different choices. Build practical understanding through real workloads and decisions.
  • Make your reasoning transferable. Explain assumptions and tradeoffs clearly. Develop examples, guidance, and tools that enable others to handle recurring decisions and recognize when they need help.
  • Connect research and infrastructure. Keep research plans grounded in usable capacity and make future needs visible to supercomputing and infrastructure teams.
  • Learn from outcomes. Compare expected and actual usage, revisit assumptions, and improve allocation decisions as workloads, systems, and priorities change.

Minimum qualifications

  • Experience making consequential resource allocation or capacity decisions in a complex computing environment, with clear ownership of the tradeoffs and outcomes.
  • Strong technical understanding of distributed systems, machine learning infrastructure, or high-performance computing. You can reason about how workload requirements interact with system constraints.
  • Demonstrated ability to improve useful output from limited resources. You can explain what constrained the work, which alternatives you considered, and why your approach helped.
  • Ability to teach complex technical ideas through clear explanations and practical examples. You have helped others become more capable and independent.
  • Comfort investigating usage and performance data directly, questioning assumptions, and changing your view when the evidence warrants it.
  • Sound judgment when teams have competing priorities. You earn trust, explain difficult decisions, and work constructively through disagreement.
  • A hands-on, collaborative approach with strong attention to detail and follow-through.

Preferred qualifications

  • Experience owning compute allocation at an AI research lab or another organization with substantial shared computing resources.
  • Familiarity with GPU clusters, distributed training, scheduling, and workload placement.
  • Understanding of how networking, storage, reliability, and hardware differences affect usable capacity.
  • Experience building tools or analyses for capacity forecasting, allocation, or utilization.
  • Experience mentoring researchers, engineers, or technical program managers in compute planning and resource management.

We encourage you to apply even if you don’t meet every preferred qualification.

Logistics

  • Location: San Francisco, California.
  • Compensation: $350,000 - $475,000 USD annually.
  • Visa sponsorship: We support visa sponsorship and work with candidates through the process.
  • Benefits: Health, dental, and vision coverage; unlimited PTO; paid parental leave; and relocation support as needed.

About Thinking Machines

The mission of Thinking Machines is to build AI that extends human will and judgment. We are training frontier models with Inkling, developing Tinker to let people make models their own, and crafting interfaces that broaden human-AI communication. We believe the future worth building is human, and we're hiring people who want to build it.

Read the original posting

From Thinking Machines Lab's careers page, first listed on Rolev.ai on October 17, 2026. Rolev.ai is not the employer.

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Common questions

What is the salary for the Technical Program Manager, Supercomputing role at Thinking Machines Lab?

The Technical Program Manager, Supercomputing posting at Thinking Machines Lab states compensation of $350,000 – $475,000 per year. It is listed as a full-time position. Final pay may depend on location, experience, and interview evaluation on Thinking Machines Lab's official career site.

Where is the Technical Program Manager, Supercomputing job at Thinking Machines Lab located?

This Technical Program Manager, Supercomputing position at Thinking Machines Lab is located in San Francisco, CA (On-site). Always check Thinking Machines Lab's application page for specific state eligibility or relocation policies.

What qualifications are required for Technical Program Manager, Supercomputing at Thinking Machines Lab?

For the Technical Program Manager, Supercomputing role, Thinking Machines Lab highlights experience with compute resource allocation, distributed systems, machine learning infrastructure, high-performance computing, capacity forecasting. Rolev.ai can score your existing resume against these requirements and show any skill gaps before you apply.

How do I apply for the Technical Program Manager, Supercomputing position at Thinking Machines Lab?

This listing links directly to Thinking Machines Lab's Ashby application page. You can apply directly on Thinking Machines Lab's site, or use Rolev.ai to check your resume fit, generate a zero-hallucination tailored resume and cover letter for this posting, and autofill the Ashby application form in 1 click with the Rolev.ai Chrome extension. You always review the form and press Submit yourself.