Director, Compute Platform

About Merlin: Merlin is a venture backed aerospace startup building a non-human pilot to enable both reduced crew and uncrewed flight. Backed by some of the world’s leading investors, Merlin is scaling alongside our customers to begin leveraging autonomy today to solve some of aviation’s biggest challenges. About You: You are a senior platform leader who understands that autonomous flight demands uncompromising reliability, real-time performance, and scalable infrastructure. You have built and owned compute platforms that power complex, mission-critical systems — spanning cloud ML training, high-fidelity simulation, and edge or embedded environments. You think holistically about architecture, balancing determinism, latency, scalability, safety, and cost. You are not looking to maintain infrastructure — you want to define it. You operate as a technical authority, partnering closely with autonomy, perception, controls, and flight software leaders to ensure the compute foundation enables rapid development and safe, scalable deployment. You thrive in environments where the platform you design directly impacts real-world performance. You are comfortable setting long-term technical direction while remaining hands-on in the most complex systems challenges. This position is based on-site at Merlin HQ in Boston, MA. Once you’re here, you’ll enjoy a variety of on-site perks designed to make your workday enjoyable and convenient. These include catered lunches featuring a rotating menu of delicious options, an assortment of snacks to keep you fueled throughout the day, and a selection of beverages, including coffee, tea, and other drinks, to keep you refreshed. Our goal is to create an environment where you can thrive both professionally and personally Merlin Labs offers an innovative, entrepreneurial, and team-focused startup environment. We also offer a top-notch benefits package (health, dental, life, unlimited vacation, and 401k with match) and work/life integration. Being part of the Merlin team allows you to become part of a small team that supports professional development while working together to achieve our mission. Merlin Labs is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, national origin, genetic information, sex (including pregnancy), gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, marital status, military service or obligation or disability status, or any other characteristic protected by law. All job offers are contingent upon the candidate passing background and reference checks. At this time, we are unable to provide visa sponsorship or consider candidates who require visa transfers. Applicants must be authorized to work in the United States without the need for visa sponsorship now or in the future. In compliance with federal law, all persons hired will be required to verify identity and eligibility to work in the United States and to complete the required employment eligibility verification form upon hire. If you require reasonable accommodation in completing an application, interviewing, completing any pre-employment testing, or otherwise participating in the employee selection process, please direct your inquiries to: [email protected] Merlin Labs does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than directly from candidates. Responsibilities: End-to-end compute architecture spanning cloud ML training, simulation clusters, data pipelines, and edge/onboard systems. Infrastructure that supports large-scale distributed training, high-fidelity simulation (SIL/HIL), and autonomy validation workflows. GPU/accelerator orchestration, workload scheduling, and performance optimization for compute-intensive autonomy systems. Design decisions that balance determinism, latency, safety, scalability, and cost. Platform reliability standards for systems that ultimately support flight-critical software. Long-term roadmap for scaling compute infrastructure as fleet size, simulation fidelity, and ML workloads grow. Technical mentorship and bar-raising across platform and infrastructure engineering. Requirements: 10+ years of experience building large-scale distributed or high-performance compute systems. Proven ownership of production infrastructure supporting autonomous systems, robotics, aerospace, or ML-heavy platforms. Deep expertise in distributed systems design, networking, and systems performance optimization. Experience architecting infrastructure for GPU-based training, simulation, or real-time compute workloads. Strong programming background in C++, Go, or Python, with comfort operating close to systems layers. Experience bridging cloud infrastructure and edge/embedded compute environments. Track record of leading complex cross-functional technical initiatives. Ability to operate with autonomy in a fast-scaling, high-ambiguity startup environment. Nice to Haves: Experience working in Aviation or another safety critical, regulated industry.

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