AI Field Engineer

Modal; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Modal is seeking an experienced Field Engineer to partner with the sales team and drive technical success with enterprise customers. You will be the technical voice, leading discovery, crafting migration paths to Modal, and delivering demos and proofs-of-concept.

You’ll address security and integration concerns, collaborate with product and engineering, and support contract negotiations with guidance on timelines and resources. Location options include NY, Stockholm, or SF with up to 30% travel.

Qualifications

• 5+ years in solutions engineering, sales engineering, or customer-facing technical roles.
• Hands-on with AWS, GCP, Azure plus compute/storage/networking.
• Experience with serverless, containers, or ML infra preferred.

Responsibilities

• Partner with Account Executives to identify and close enterprise opportunities.
• Lead technical discovery sessions with prospects to map current infra and pain points.
• Design technical solutions showing Modal value and migration options.
• Conduct demos, proofs-of-concept, and address security/compliance concerns.
• Support negotiations with technical timelines and resource estimates.

Skills

Solutions engineering

Cloud platforms

Containerization

ML infra

IaC

Enterprise sales cycles

Travel up to 30%

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Terraform

Pulumi

CloudFormation

CI/CD

Job description

About Us:

Modal is building the serverless compute platform to support the next generation of AI companies. In order to deliver the developer experience we wanted, we went deep and built our own infrastructure—including our own custom file system, container runtime, scheduler, container image builder, and much more.

We’re a small team based out of New York, Stockholm and San Francisco. In just one year, we’ve reached 8-figure revenue, tripled our headcount, scaled to support thousands of GPUs, and raised over $32M in funding.

Working at Modal means joining one of the fastest-growing AI infrastructure organizations at an early stage, with many opportunities to grow within the company. Our team includes creators of popular open-source projects (e.g. Seaborn, Luigi), academic researchers, international olympiad medalists, and experienced engineering and product leaders with decades of experience.

The Role:

Modal is seeking an experienced Field Engineer to partner with our sales team and drive technical sales success. As a Field Engineer, you will be the technical voice in our sales process, working directly with Account Executives to help enterprise customers understand how Modal can transform their AI/ML infrastructure. You will:

• Partner with Account Executives to identify, qualify, and close strategic enterprise opportunities
• Lead technical discovery sessions with prospective customers to understand their current infrastructure, pain points, and requirements
• Design and present compelling technical solutions that demonstrate how Modal addresses customer needs
• Architect migration paths from existing cloud infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure) to Modal’s serverless platform
• Conduct technical demos, experiments, and proof-of-concepts that showcase Modal’s capabilities
• Navigate complex technical evaluations and address security, compliance, and integration concerns
• Build trusted advisor relationships with technical decision-makers including CTOs, VPs of Engineering, and ML Engineering leads
• Collaborate with product and engineering teams to communicate customer feedback and influence product roadmap
• Support contract negotiations by providing technical expertise on implementation timelines, resource requirements, and success metrics

Requirements:

• 5+ years of experience in solutions engineering, sales engineering, or customer-facing technical roles
• Deep hands-on experience with cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) including compute, storage, networking, and managed services
• Strong knowledge of containerization technologies (Docker, Kubernetes, container orchestration)
• Experience with databases (SQL/NoSQL), data pipelines, and distributed systems architecture
• Understanding of ML/AI infrastructure challenges including model training, inference, and MLOps workflows
• Familiarity with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation) and CI/CD pipelines
• Proven track record of supporting enterprise software sales cycles ($100K+ ACV)
• Exceptional presentation and communication skills with ability to explain complex technical concepts to both technical and business audiences
• Strong business acumen with understanding of enterprise buying processes and procurement
• Experience building migration strategies and implementation roadmaps for large-scale infrastructure changes
• Ability to work effectively with cross-functional teams including sales, product, and engineering
• Experience selling or implementing serverless computing, container platforms, or ML infrastructure solutions preferred
• Willingness to travel up to 30% for customer meetings and industry events
• Based in or willing to relocate to New York, Stockholm, or San Francisco

Compensation

$180K – $240K Offers Equity