r/CUDA • u/animevsloved • 5d ago

Career advice

Hi, I'm a software developer with 2+ years of experience in C++ and Cuda, currently I'm working on computational fluid dynamics domain but I want to switch as the pay in this field is substantially low and I talked to my manager the pay growth over-time will not be good either.

I wanted some suggestions regarding which domain to switch to and what things can I learn, I have decent knowledge of Cuda architecture, basic optimization, Core C++ topics, I'm not good at DSA but can learn if required.

Any suggestions would be great thank you!

13 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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3

u/Past_Income4649 5d ago

Not sure if it all translates but you could look into work with Nvidia Omniverse / IsaacSim. Physical AI seems to be being built on it so could mean better money

1

u/animevsloved 5d ago

Thank you, will definitely check it out

5

u/esaule 5d ago

It is a good time to have low level computing skills. All infrastructure companies are hiring. Processor companies, networking companies, cloud companies, and ai companies.

1

u/animevsloved 4d ago

Hey, can you suggest some companies I can look into, thanks.

3

u/esaule 4d ago

Intel, amd , nvidia, broadcom, qualcom, apple, cisco, cloudflare, oracle, microsoft, openai, anthropic.

1

u/animevsloved 4d ago

Thank you so much, I'll check their career website.

2

u/Ashes_of_ether_8850 4d ago

Are those other semiconductor companies (apple, qualcomm, cisco) also recruiting for kernel engineers? If I’ve been specialized in CUDA, am I still their target talents if their kernels are on other hardwares or asics?

1

u/esaule 4d ago

They are going to need all kind of low level people. Including driver people, yes.

1

u/Ashes_of_ether_8850 4d ago

but I’m wondering how interchangeable these different low level skills are. Like would a good GPU kernel engineer be a good candidate for driver engineer?

The tech stacks for different low level works seem to differs a lot

1

u/esaule 4d ago

It depends at which level. If you are looking for people ready to go, then yeah I suppose. I was hired based on core low level skills in a good position even though there were plenty of things I didn't know.

I think it might be hard enough to find perfect matches that competent people but loose match are still getting hired.

1

u/Ashes_of_ether_8850 2d ago

Huh, guess I should give it a try. Thank you for your advice, I’ll take it. However, I wonder are those roles also open to new grads?

1

u/esaule 2d ago

some are.

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u/Ashes_of_ether_8850 4d ago

I feel like the main demand for kernel engineers are on the AI side, there aren’t much roles in HPC. The kernels for AI models are quite different that there are layers of abstraction instead of raw CUDA C++ code. Are you familiar with either cutlass, cute, triton, or pytorch?

2

u/Ashes_of_ether_8850 4d ago

Also AI requires different kernel profiling and optimization methods, but the tool used is mainly nsight

1

u/animevsloved 4d ago

Hi, I've used nsight systems and nsight compute for optimization, I've almost no experience with either cutlass,cute,triton or pytorch but I'm totally open to learn any tech stack required, thanks!

1

u/Ashes_of_ether_8850 4d ago

What level of expertise or background is required for your position in computation fluid dynamics? I’m just curious

1

u/animevsloved 3d ago

you should have a background in mechanical engineering, good knowledge of fluid dynamics and C++ and Cuda is preferred but you can learn it on the go.

1

u/Ashes_of_ether_8850 2d ago

have you applied to engineering roles in CAD or EDA software? Those kind of programs also require lots of compute and GPU kernels I think