Technical Project Manager / Engineering Lead – AI/ML Infrastructure

SambaNova is a leader in next-generation AI infrastructure, delivering a full-stack inference platform for customers worldwide. At the core of SambaNova's technology is the RDU (Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit) — a chip built on a dataflow architecture rather than the traditional GPU model. Its decode performance is especially strong for agentic workloads like multi-turn agents, code generation, and long-running applications. RDUs are packaged into SambaRack, rack-scale hardware that lets customers deploy state-of-the-art models with better performance, greater energy efficiency, and faster time to value. We are seeking a highly technical and strategic Project Manager / Engineering Lead to own and advance our engagement with a key strategic partner. The ideal candidate will be the central hub for all technical, operational, and strategic activities. You will be responsible for ensuring the technical success of joint projects, managing complex deliverables, leading a cross-functional engineering team, and deepening the customer relationship to secure future business. This role requires a unique blend of deep technical understanding of AI/ML systems, exceptional project management skills, and strong customer-facing abilities. Key Responsibilities • Technical Project Leadership & Execution: • Own the end-to-end planning and execution of complex technical evaluation projects ● Develop and maintain detailed project timelines, ensuring alignment between engineering efforts and customer milestones. • Lead daily standups and syncs to track progress, identify risks, and unblock the engineering team • Manage deliverables such as performance benchmarks, technical reports, and software artifacts. • Customer & Stakeholder Management: • Serve as the primary technical point of contact for the customer's engineering teams. • Manage customer expectations, clearly communicating project status, capabilities, and limitations. This includes being candid about software maturity and guiding the customer toward successful outcomes • Translate customer requirements and feedback into actionable engineering tasks. • Prepare and deliver technical briefings and reports to customer stakeholders at all levels. • Cross-Functional Team Coordination: • Coordinate the work of a large, distributed team of engineers specializing in compilers, performance SDKs, model bring-up, systems, and packaging. • Clearly assign action items and ensure accountability across different functional groups. ● Facilitate collaboration between internal teams (e.g., Product, Engineering, GTM) to ensure a unified strategy. • Technical Analysis & Strategy: • Understand and articulate the technical differentiators of the platform, such as scale-up/scale-out (SUSO) performance, compilation workflows, and comparative analysis against competitors • Drive technical decisions on project scope, such as selecting which models (e.g., Llama 70B/405B, Qwen, GLM) to focus on and defining the success criteria for deep engagements. • Analyze project outcomes to inform product roadmap and future sales strategies. Qualifications & Experience Required: • Fluent in Japanese and English. • Experience in supporting strategic Japanese and US high technical companies. Can manage cultural and time-zone differences. • 10+ years of experience in a technical project management, engineering lead, or customer-facing architect role within AI/ML, HPC, or systems infrastructure. • Proven experience managing complex software/hardware integration or evaluation projects with tight deadlines. • Strong understanding of AI/ML workloads, including model training, inference, and the associated software stack (e.g., PyTorch, vLLM). • Excellent communication skills, with the ability to explain highly techni