Early Career System Architect in London

Fractile was founded in 2022 on the bet that the world’s most capable AI systems would be limited in their impact by the time taken to produce useful outputs. We aim to unlock this latent value by radically re-inventing the hardware that we run our frontier AI models on. We have been building chips and systems that tackle the problem of efficiently generating output at thousands of tokens per second while handling the complexity and capacity challenges of operating large models at very long contexts.

The workloads that push to the limits of the current frontier are already transformational; it is the technical and economic limits on inference speed that are constraining progress. The defining work of the 21st century will be marked by the engine of inference delivering immense and diffuse chains of intellectual inquiry, in drug discovery, software engineering, materials discovery, and any field where progress is driven by deep reasoning and intelligence to resolve complex problems.

System Architecture sits within the Hardware organisation at the company, responsible for designing the chips and systems that power our groundbreaking AI inference accelerator. This includes chip-level architecture and interconnects, board design, thermal management, and full system integration.

The System Architecture team defines how our hardware comes together, working closely with digital design, verification, firmware, and software teams to ensure architecture choices translate cleanly into working silicon and reliable hardware platforms. As an Early Career System Architect, you’ll support senior architects in defining and refining this architecture, gaining hands-on exposure to early prototyping, bring-up, and system testing as ideas become real hardware.

We’re looking for someone early in their career with a strong foundation in digital systems and computer architecture, gained through a degree, internships, or personal projects, who is genuinely curious about how complex hardware systems are taken from concept through to production. You’ll be comfortable working across disciplines — hardware, firmware, and software — and keen to learn fast in a fast-moving environment.

Key Requirements:

• A degree (or final-year study) in Electronic Engineering, Computer Engineering, Physics, or a related field.
• Exposure to system-level design concepts — power, thermal, I/O, memory, or interconnect architectures — through academic projects, internships, or personal projects.
• Some familiarity with digital design flows, gained through coursework, internships, or personal projects.
• Comfortable working across disciplines — hardware, firmware, and software.
• Strong communicator, able to explain technical ideas clearly to others.

Desirable:

• Exposure to AI acceleration, HPC, or data-centric architectures.
• Hands-on FPGA prototyping or hardware bring-up.
• Familiarity with SystemC or MATLAB.

What We Offer:

• Competitive salary reflective of your experience and the specialist nature of the role.
• Meaningful equity so everyone shares in the value creation.
• Benefits: Private Medical, Dental and Vision, Contributory Pension, 25 Days holiday plus bank holidays and Life/Critical Illness Insurance.
• Diverse & fun office: we believe the hardest problems get solved by the broadest range of minds. We are committed to Equal Employment Opportunity through attracting and retaining a diverse team and building an inclusive environment.

Our work involves technologies subject to UK, US and other international export control regulations. Certain roles may require additional eligibility checks to ensure compliance with applicable law. We'll be transparent about this throughout the hiring process.