Senior/Staff Software Engineer (Back-End), Inference

Cohere; Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal; Hybrid; CAD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Lunch stipend

Health and dental benefits

RRSP matching

Parental leave

Education stipend

Enrichment benefits

Vacation days

Travel budget for offices/remote

Job summary

Cohere is hiring a Senior/Staff Back-End Software Engineer to shape Model Vault, Cohere’s enterprise-grade inference platform. You’ll define architectures, build secure, scalable systems, and own end-to-end delivery from design to production.

Join a team delivering reliable identity, deployment, billing, and observability across clouds, with a focus on security, privacy, and performance for enterprise workloads.

Qualifications

• Strong backend engineer with fundamentals in distributed systems, databases, networking, operating systems, and security.
• Strong programming fundamentals and production systems experience in Go, Python, Java, C++, Rust or similar.
• Designed and operated production systems where correctness, availability, security, and performance mattered at significant scale.
• Ability to take ambiguous, high-impact technical problems and define architecture to drive reliable production systems.
• Strong systems-design instincts: concurrency, caching, queues, rate limiting, backpressure, failure domains, idempotency, and graceful degradation.
• Security boundaries: authentication, authorization, identity, cryptography, secrets, tenant isolation, and related risks.
• Comfort reasoning across backend services, APIs, databases, distributed systems, and cloud infrastructure.
• Comfort debugging across unfamiliar codebases and跨 service boundaries.
• Attention to production engineering details: instrumentation, capacity planning, migrations, backward compatibility, incident response, and safe rollouts.
• Willingness to challenge existing architecture and evolve foundations as needs change.
• Proven track record delivering technically difficult projects from unclear starts to dependable systems.

Responsibilities

• Evolve and scale the backend systems powering Model Vault, including authentication, deployments, billing, metering, and customer lifecycle.
• Lead major architectural initiatives across identity, payments, usage systems, platform scalability, and core foundations.
• Build reliable control-plane services for provisioning, configuring, scaling, and operating model deployments across clouds and hardware.
• Design APIs and distributed systems with strong guarantees around correctness, isolation, failure recovery, idempotency, and observability.
• Integrate security and privacy into platform architecture, including tenant isolation and secrets management.
• Tackle complex problems spanning backend, cloud infra, security and AI inference where standard SaaS patterns fall short.
• Drive projects end-to-end from architecture through rollout, production operations, and iteration on real workloads.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

Databases

Networking

Operating systems

Security

Go

Python

Java

C++

Rust

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Who are we?

Cohere is the leading security-first enterprise AI company. We build cutting-edge foundation AI models and end-to-end products that are designed to solve real-world business problems.

We’re training and deploying frontier models for enterprises who are building AI systems. We believe that our work is instrumental to the widespread adoption of AI and we are looking for folks that want to be part of that.

We obsess over what we build. Each one of us is responsible for contributing to increasing the capabilities of our models and the value they drive for our customers. Cohere is a team of researchers, engineers, designers, and more, who are all passionate about their craft.

We are a global technology company headquartered in Toronto with key offices in London, New York City, San Francisco, Montreal, Paris, Berlin and Seoul. Join us!

Why this role?

This role is for a highly experienced Back-End Software Engineer who wants to work on core systems that shape how the platform (Model Vault) operates. You will help define the architecture of the platform where reliability, security, performance, and simplicity all matter, and where many of the problems do not have off-the-shelf solutions.

Model Vault is Cohere’s inference platform for deploying and operating models securely at enterprise scale. The team owns the systems between a customer and the underlying AI infrastructure, including identity, deployments, metering, billing, security, privacy, and confidential computing. We are strengthening these systems as Model Vault grows, with the goal of scaling to millions of users and supporting some of the world’s most demanding enterprise workloads.

As a Senior/Staff Software Engineer, you will:

• Evolve and scale the backend systems that power Model Vault, including authentication and authorization, deployment management, billing, metering, and customer lifecycle.

• Lead major architectural initiatives across identity, payments, usage systems, platform scalability, and other core product foundations.

• Build highly reliable control-plane services for provisioning, configuring, scaling, and operating model deployments across clouds and hardware platforms.

• Design APIs and distributed systems with strong guarantees around correctness, consistency, isolation, failure recovery, idempotency, and observability.

• Build security and privacy into the platform architecture, including tenant isolation, least-privilege access, auditability, secrets management, encryption, and confidential computing boundaries.

• Solve complex problems that span backend systems, cloud infrastructure, security, and AI inference, where conventional SaaS patterns are often not enough.

• Drive projects end-to-end, from architecture and threat modeling through implementation, rollout, production operations, and iteration based on real customer workloads.

You may be a good fit if:

• You are a strong backend engineer with excellent fundamentals in distributed systems, databases, networking, operating systems, and security.

• You have strong programming fundamentals and experience building production systems in languages such as Go, Python, Java, C++, Rust, or similar. You write clean, maintainable, well-tested code and make thoughtful tradeoffs between simplicity, performance, and correctness.

• You have designed and operated production systems where correctness, availability, security, and performance mattered at significant scale.

• You can take ambiguous, high-impact technical problems, define the right architecture, and drive them through to reliable production systems.

• You have strong systems-design instincts and understand concepts such as concurrency, consistency, caching, queues, rate limiting, backpressure, failure domains, idempotency, and graceful degradation.

• You think deeply about security boundaries and understand authentication, authorization, identity, cryptography, secrets, tenant isolation, and how small implementation choices can create significant security risks.

• You are comfortable reasoning across backend services, APIs, databases, distributed systems, and the cloud infrastructure they run on.

• You are comfortable diving into unfamiliar codebases and debugging complex problems that cross service or system boundaries.

• You care about the details of production engineering, including instrumentation, capacity planning, migrations, backwards compatibility, incident response, and safe rollouts.

• You are comfortable challenging existing architecture and evolving foundational components when the system’s needs change.

• You have a track record of taking technically difficult projects from an unclear starting point to systems that other engineers and customers depend on.

Full-Time Employees at Cohere enjoy these Perks:

• A weekly lunch stipend of $75/£75 or equivalent in your local currency for lunch.

• Full health and dental benefits, including a separate budget for mental health.

• RRSP matching, 401K, Pension Scheme.

• 100% Parental Leave top-up for up to 6 months, for either parent.

• Annual enrichment benefits:

  Arts & culture, fitness/wellness, quality time, and a workspace improvement credit.

  Education & learning stipend for conferences, courses, and coaching.

• 6 weeks of paid vacation (30 working days!)

• Budget for traveling to other offices if you are remote, plus an annual company offsite.

How and Where We Work:

• Cohere is remote-friendly, but we also have offices in Toronto, London, New York City, San Francisco, Montreal, Paris, Berlin and Seoul with more opening soon.

• For those in the office: a daily lunch program, plenty of snacks, and regular community and social events.

• For those not near an office: a co-working benefit so you can work alongside others in your city.

• Everyone receives a $500 home office stipend to set up your workspace properly.

We strive to create an inclusive work environment for all; we welcome applicants from all backgrounds and are committed to providing equal opportunities. Should you require any accommodations during the recruitment process, please submit an Accommodations Request Form, and we will work together to meet your needs.

We may use AI-enabled tools to screen and assess applicants against the criteria for this position. This helps our recruiters identify potentially qualified candidates, but it doesn't limit the applications our recruiters may review or consider.

Beware of Scams: Cohere will never ask for payment or third-party services (e.g., CV writing) as part of our hiring process. All legitimate roles are listed on the Cohere careers page and LinkedIn only, with all communications from Cohere employees coming from an @cohere.com or @cw.cohere email alias. If jobs are viewed on other sites then please verify these through our official careers page.