Graphcore’s growing engineering presence in Gdańsk reflects a deliberate investment in building world-class AI systems in one of Europe’s most competitive technical ecosystems. As a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank, Graphcore is scaling its end-to-end system capabilities to help shape the next generation of Artificial Intelligence. For Jakub, Cloud Software Engineer in Gdańsk, what matters is not only the complexity of the work, but the kind of environment that makes sustained, thoughtful engineering possible. The same mindset that draws him to endurance sport – paying attention, staying present, and improving over time – also shapes how he approaches difficult problems, teamwork, and the balance between work and life outside it. Outside of work, I’ve always been someone who gets interested in things and then commits properly. For a long time that meant sport – many different kinds: running, triathlon, sailing, and even FPV drone flying. If something looked interesting, I wanted to try it, and if it stayed interesting for more than a few weeks it usually became a serious hobby. Recently life changed quite a bit. In the last year my family grew by two new members: a puppy and a son. My son is two months old now and the puppy is nine months old, so for the moment they take about 99% of my free time. Hard training is on pause for a while, but the mindset behind those hobbies is still something I carry into work. When I was younger, I read about the Tarahumara runners – a tribe famous for running incredible distances every day, often barefoot. The idea fascinated me so one day I simply took off my shoes and tried it myself. It’s a completely different experience from normal running. When people run with headphones, often the goal is to forget they are running. Music helps you ignore the discomfort. Barefoot running does the opposite. You become very aware of what you’re doing. Every step matters because you feel every rock, every change in the surface. You have to think about how you move. In a strange way it becomes almost meditative. You stop trying to escape the effort and start paying attention to it. That idea – paying attention to the details of what you're doing – translates surprisingly well to engineering. Most of our work involves thinking: solving problems, discussing ideas, and sometimes having challenging conversations. After a demanding week you can feel mentally exhausted. But I’ve learned something interesting: when you force yourself to go outside and get tired in a different way – physically – the mental fatigue often disappears. Running, cycling, endurance training in general helps clear your mind. There’s also real physiology behind it. When you train at a moderate but sustained intensity, the body releases serotonin and dopamine for hours afterwards. If the effort is balanced correctly, you finish the session feeling calm, clear, and surprisingly optimistic. Problems that felt overwhelming earlier suddenly look smaller. Very often that’s also when solutions appear. More often than I can count, I’ve come back from a run thinking: ah, that's how we should solve it. The only challenge is remembering the idea when you get home. Something else endurance sport teaches you is patience. Many companies encourage people to define big long-term goals: where you want to be in three or five years. That can be useful, but sport teaches a slightly different perspective, you realise that progress is rarely linear. Skipping one training session doesn’t change your life, but doing the session usually makes you feel better. The real value is in the daily practice – the small improvements, the consistency, and the discipline of showing up. The same applies at work. For me, working somewhere that supports life outside of work is extremely important. I was fortunate that my previous team at Intel shared that mindset, and some of us now work at Graphcore. In many ways the same values carried with us. We encourage each other to move, to step away from the desk occasionally. Sometimes someone simply says: ‘Let’s play table tennis,’ sometimes people decide to run the stairs to the 30th floor and compare times, and other days someone asks who wants to play Frisbee after work, or whether anyone cycled into the office that morning. A few of us have even joined long runs and planned bike events together. None of this is formal policy, it’s just part of how the team operates and embraces our interests. People remind each other that we’re not only here to sit in front of a computer, and that makes the work better. When a company supports people’s interests outside of work, the message is quite simple, work with us and be yourself. For engineers, especially those working on difficult systems, having space to think clearly matters. Sometimes that clarity comes from discussion with colleagues, and sometimes it comes from stepping away from the keyboard and moving for a while. In both cases, the important thing is having an environment where that balance is normal. Graphcore continues to grow its engineering teams in Gdańsk. If you’re someone who enjoys solving difficult problems, values thoughtful work, and believes clear thinking sometimes starts away from the desk, explore our current opportunities. When life changes pace
Learning to pay attention
Solving problems by stepping away
Progress isn’t linear
A team culture that supports real life
Work with us. Be yourself.