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Compute Lead

Goodfire San Francisco, CA Full-time Research and Development Posted Sep 26, 2026
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Culture signals in this specific role

Inferred from the employer’s wording in this job description. These role-level signals are separate from the company-wide employee-review scores below.

OwnershipThe description emphasizes ownership or end-to-end responsibility.
Deep technical workThe role highlights substantial technical, research, or systems work.
Mission-ledThe role connects its work to mission, safety, or broader impact.

What it’s like to work at Goodfire

AI Interpretability · San Francisco

Not verified
Employee Rating
Not verified
Work-Life Balance
29
Open Roles
eng-drivenethical-aimany-hatsproduct-impact

What employees love

  • Frontier AI interpretability research backed by Anthropic and top-tier VCs
  • World-class team from OpenAI, DeepMind, Harvard, and Stanford

What could be better

  • Very early stage with ~51 employees — expect startup ambiguity and rapid change
  • No Glassdoor reviews yet — limited visibility into day-to-day culture
View full Goodfire culture profile →

About the Role

About Goodfire

Goodfire is an AI interpretability research lab. We build interpretability agents and infrastructure to understand, monitor, and align AI models.

We believe that AI is the most consequential technology of our time. Yet AI models are trained by trial and error today, with limited understanding of what drives their behavior. Our goal is to advance the research and technology needed to fully understand and align AI so humanity can trust superintelligence.

Goodfire is a public benefit corporation founded by researchers who helped pioneer the field of interpretability at OpenAI and Google DeepMind. We are headquartered in San Francisco and have raised over $200M from leading investors including Lightspeed, Menlo, and B Capital.

About the role

We’re hiring a Compute Lead to own one of the most critical resources at the company: our compute for model training, research, and customers. You’ll run everything from how we allocate our compute to how we source, test, and secure capacity. You’ll make the day-to-day 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 across teams and the conviction to make hard trade-offs rather than split the difference. You might be the right fit if you find the intersection of infrastructure, operations, and high-stakes resource allocation exhilarating.

Key responsibilities

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 $200-400k.

This role reports to our Head of Finance.

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.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is the work-life balance like at Goodfire?
We have not verified a representative work-life balance rating. Ask the hiring team about working hours, on-call expectations and time-zone overlap.
What is Goodfire’s culture like?
Goodfire is characterized by these culture values: eng-driven, ethical-ai, many-hats, product-impact. No representative employee rating is published here. Frontier AI interpretability research backed by Anthropic and top-tier VCs
How many open roles does Goodfire have?
Goodfire currently has 29 open roles across departments including engineering, product, sales, and more. Roles are refreshed daily from their careers page.
Is this role remote-friendly?
This role is located in San Francisco, CA. Check the job description above for specific location and remote work details.
Apply for this role at Goodfire →