High Performance Engineer (up to £140k)

About this role

This role is with one of Dex's trusted partner companies. We work closely with their teams to truly understand their culture, goals, and what they're looking for, so we can match you with the right opportunity and give you context about the role before you commit to a process. If you're interested sign up to Dex to apply. Dex is an AI recruiter agent that helps you run your job search. Tell Dex your stack, seniority, and what you want to build. We will manage your applications and surface other opportunities that are a fit. The role Most robotics simulation hits a bottleneck because the physics engine cannot run fast enough to train policies at scale. This team builds GPU-accelerated simulation and training infrastructure where speed is the entire value proposition, founded by two engineers who spent over a decade building physics engines at the world's dominant GPU architecture company. Backed by top-tier VCs with extensive runway, they run a lean 11-person team in Cambridge with physical hardware in the room. You will own performance across the entire stack: from GPU physics simulation and policy learning loops to real-time edge execution on humanoid and quadruped robots. This is a senior IC seat, not a middle-management layer. You are here to profile systems, reclaim milliseconds alongside founders who still write engine code daily, and provide the technical anchor that a sharp, early-career team needs in the room. The work • Profile and optimize GPU and CPU execution pipelines across the simulation engine, training loops, and edge deployment to systematically eliminate latency. • Architect cache-friendly memory layouts, lock-free structures, and parallel execution paths tailored to modern hardware limits. • Test and validate performance gains directly on physical quadruped and humanoid robots inside the lab. • Set the engineering standard for performance testing and benchmarking across the team through hands-on pairing and code review. • Work directly with the technical founders to debate architecture and make irreversible design calls on the core engine. What You Bring • Mastery of modern C++ with a demonstrable record of making systems measurably faster through low-level profiling, memory layout design, parallelism, and deep hardware awareness. • Prior work in environments where latency or throughput is the product itself, such as game or physics engines, HPC, scientific simulation, low-latency trading, or embedded real-time systems. • Proven ability as a senior individual contributor to raise the technical bar of an early-career engineering team through rigorous code reviews, direct pairing, and clear task decomposition. • Ability to work fully on site at the lab in Cambridge, UK every day. Why apply through Dex Legitimate high-performance systems roles in frontier robotics are rare, and it is difficult to separate real engine work from generic integration software from a job spec alone. Applying through Dex gets your profile directly in front of the technical founders without navigating recruiter screens, backed by full briefing on their architectural roadmap before your first conversation. If you're interested, sign up to Dex to apply - https://meetdex.ai/job-listing?job_id=7a345bb2-c4a8-4ab0-bbb8-b833a3bf8931&utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=job_listing&utm_campaign=xml-feed_promoted-paradigm&utm_content=swe As part of the recruitment process at Dex, we process your personal data in accordance with our Privacy Notice for Job Applicants. This notice explains how and why your data is collected and used, and how you can contact us if you have any concerns.