Head of Compute at goodfire | AI Job Board

Job description

About Goodfire

Goodfire is a research company using interpretability to understand, learn from, and design AI systems. Our mission is to build the next generation of safe and powerful AI—not by scaling alone, but by understanding the intelligence we're building.

Scaling has proven powerful, but today's approach is fundamentally limited: we can't meaningfully understand, debug, or shape what models learn. Every engineering discipline has been gated by fundamental science and AI is at that inflection point now.

We're advancing the science of how AI systems actually work. Treating models as black boxes is an unnecessary handicap—we have access to the structures inside them, and understanding those structures lets us steer what models learn, make them safer and more useful, and extract the vast knowledge they contain. Our goal is to make AI that can be understood, debugged, and shaped like software.

Goodfire is a public benefit corporation headquartered in San Francisco with a team of the world’s top interpretability researchers and engineers from organizations like OpenAI and DeepMind. We're backed by over $200M from B Capital, Menlo Ventures, Lightspeed, Eric Schmidt, and others.

About the role

We're hiring a Head of Compute to own the strategy behind one of the most critical resources at the company: our compute for model training, research, and customers. You'll own everything from how we allocate our compute to how we source capacity, whether that's renting, partnering, or owning our own GPUs. You’ll make the calls that determine how far our world-class research and product ambitions can go.

We're looking for someone who can navigate GPU scarcity and partner negotiations with rigor, and moves with exceptional urgency. You'll need strong judgment to balance competing demands and the conviction to make hard trade-offs rather than split the difference. You may be the right fit if you find the intersection of infrastructure, strategy, and high-stakes resource allocation exhilarating.

Key responsibilities

Own Goodfire’s compute strategy across training, research, and customer workloads
Build and execute our compute sourcing strategy, deciding when to rent, partner, or own GPUs. Continuously optimize for cost, reliability, and strategic flexibility
Secure the compute capacity and pricing that protect our ambitions under real GPU scarcity
Own the economics of compute end-to-end, including vendor negotiations, contract strategy, capacity planning, utilization, and long-term impact
Partner closely with research and product teams to translate roadmaps into concrete compute requirements and ensure infrastructure never becomes a bottleneck
Build forecasting models that anticipate compute demand and enable confident long-term planning
Partner with finance and leadership on capital allocation, investment decisions, and infrastructure strategy

Our values

Goodfire is looking for individuals who embody our values and share our deep commitment to making interpretability accessible. We are building a team first and foremost.

Put mission and team first

All we do is in service of our mission. We trust each other, deeply care about the success of the organization, and choose to put our team above ourselves.

Improve constantly

We are constantly looking to improve every piece of the business. We proactively critique ourselves and others in a kind and thoughtful way that translates to practical improvements in the organization. We are pragmatic and consistently implement the obvious fixes that work.

Take ownership and initiative

There are no bystanders here. We proactively identify problems and take full responsibility over getting a strong result. We are self-driven, own our mistakes, and feel deep responsibility over what we’re building.

Action today

We have a small amount of time to do something incredibly hard and meaningful. The pace and intensity of the organization is high. If we can take action today or tomorrow, we will choose to do it today.

Where we work

We are hiring for this position in our San Francisco office who’d be onsite 5 days a week.

What we offer

This role offers market competitive salary, equity, and competitive benefits.

The expected salary range for this position is $400-500k.

This role reports to our CEO.

Most importantly, you'll have the opportunity to join a vital mission at an important point in its trajectory — we are developing groundbreaking technology with a world-class team on the critical path to ensuring a safe and beneficial future for humanity. If you want to do your life’s work with us, even if you believe you do not meet every single requirement, apply now.