Software Engineer - Inference Platform

The posting, as Baseten wrote it

ABOUT BASETEN

Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma, and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F https://www.baseten.co/blog/announcing-our-series-f/, led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to ship AI products.

THE ROLE

We're looking for distributed systems engineers and product-minded generalists to build the distributed runtime that powers large-scale LLM inference on Baseten. Our inference platform empowers customers to deploy and operate cutting-edge models with industry-leading performance, scalability, and reliability. It also powers Model APIs, our hosted endpoints for the latest open-source models. You'll work across the stack, from the developer experience customers use to deploy models, through the libraries behind features like tool calling and reasoning, down to the systems that orchestrate deployments on Kubernetes and route traffic efficiently. Your job is to make sure every model on our platform is fast, reliable, and cost-efficient. You'll join a small, high-impact team at the intersection of distributed systems, model performance, infrastructure, and product, helping define how developers use AI models at scale. This role is ideal for engineers who enjoy owning systems in production, solving hard integration problems, and making complex infrastructure simple and reliable for users.

EXAMPLE INITIATIVES

You'll get to work on these types of projects on our Inference Platform:

• The Baseten Inference Stack at NVIDIA Dynamo Day https://www.baseten.co/blog/nvidia-dynamo-day-baseten-inference-stack/
• 2x faster inference with KV cache-aware routing https://www.baseten.co/blog/how-baseten-achieved-2x-faster-inference-with-nvidia-dynamo/
• How Baseten multi-cloud capacity management (MCM) unifies deployments https://www.baseten.co/blog/how-baseten-multi-cloud-capacity-management-mcm-powers-cloud-self-hosted-and-hybr/#comparing-deployment-options-cloud-vs-self-hosted-vs-hybrid

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Build the infrastructure and orchestration systems that deploy and run large-scale distributed LLM inference, including routing, autoscaling, scheduling, and runtime management.
• Design, build, and operate Model APIs, with a focus on advanced inference capabilities: structured outputs (JSON mode, grammar-constrained generation), tool/function calling, and multimodal serving.
• Implement platform fundamentals such as API versioning, validation, usage metering, quotas, and authentication.
• Instrument deep observability (metrics, traces, logs) and build repeatable benchmarks for speed, reliability, and quality. Help set best prac

[…]
g writing clear design docs and working across functions.

NICE TO HAVE

• Experience with or contributions to LLM inference engines and frameworks such as vLLM, SGLang, TensorRT-LLM, TGI, or Dynamo.
• Deep Kubernetes experience, including operators and custom resources, plus familiarity with service meshes or API gateways.
• Experience with distributed scheduling, autoscaling, or service orchestration.
• Experience operating GPU workloads in production.
• A background in developer-facing infrastructure or APIs, or contributions to open-source infrastructure or ML systems.
• Familiarity with observability tooling, CI/CD systems, or release automation.

BENEFITS

• Competitive compensation, including meaningful equity
• (U.S. only) 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance for employee and dependents
• Flexible PTO policy including company wide Winter Break (our offices are closed from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day!)
• Paid parental leave
• Fertility and family-building stipend through Carrot
• (U.S. only) Company-facilitated 401(k)
• Exposure to a variety of ML startups, offering unparalleled learning and networking opportunities.

Apply now to embark on a rewarding journey in shaping the future of AI! If you are a motivated individual with a passion for machine learning and a desire to be part of a collaborative and forward-thinking team, we would love to hear from you.

At Baseten, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law (by example, the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, where applicable).