Backend Infrastructure Engineer

Vinci; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 190,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Vinci is building operator intelligence infrastructure for hardware programs. This role focuses on designing, building, and operating the backend services and infrastructure that power Vinci’s simulation and inference platform.

You will own IaC across cloud environments, implement robust CI/CD pipelines, and evolve build systems across Python and C++ codebases. Ideal candidates have 8+ years in backend/infrastructure, strong Python and familiarity with C++, and hands-on cloud experience

Qualifications

• Backend & infrastructure engineering with a focus on production systems.
• Hands-on production cloud work with at least one major cloud provider.
• Strong CI/CD practices and pipeline ownership.
• Experience navigating multi-language codebases (Python/C++).
• Contributed to a production data processing or platform system.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate the backend services and infrastructure powering Vinci’s simulation and inference platform.
• Own infrastructure-as-code across cloud environments, provisioning services reliably.
• Build and harden CI/CD pipelines to enable confident shipping with regression coverage.
• Maintain and evolve build systems (CMake, pip/uv) across large Python and C++ codebases.
• Take early prototypes through iteration to customer use in incremental steps.
• Close gaps in existing infrastructure and evolve core platform components as the product grows.
• Collaborate with Physicists, AI researchers, Software Engineers, and Computational Geometry experts.

Tools

Terraform

AWS

GCP

Azure

Kubernetes

CMake

Python

C++

Docker

Jenkins

Job description

About us

At Vinci, we are building the operator intelligence infrastructure that modern hardware programs rely on daily. We have already proven that a single foundation model works out of the box across physics on realistic production workloads.

• Trained on petabytes of structured physics data
• Running billion-voxel inference in production
• Tier-1 semiconductor and hardware customers
• Operating across multiple physical scales and operator regimes

We are scaling deployment at industrial magnitude:

• Increase simulation throughput by two orders of magnitude
• Expand simulation capabilities to maximize utility and domain coverage
• Support global, multi-entity deployment across Tier-1 ecosystems

Our ambition is to become the default operator intelligence layer that hardware companies run on. To get there, we need the backend and infrastructure that lets our research move to production reliably, repeatably, and at scale.

Building the Backbone

Our unified model architecture delivers steady-state and transient solutions to partial differential equations at production scale. None of that reaches a customer without robust infrastructure underneath it: reproducible builds, automated pipelines, well-provisioned cloud, and code that holds up under load. This role owns that backbone. You will make our systems fast, dependable, and easy for physicists, researchers, and engineers to build on.

What You Will Do

Your north star will be production and delivering value to our customers.

• Design, build, and operate the backend services and infrastructure that power Vinci’s simulation and inference platform.
• Own infrastructure-as-code with Terraform across our cloud environments, provisioning and managing services reliably and repeatably.
• Build and harden CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins or equivalent) so the team can ship with confidence and strong regression coverage.
• Maintain and evolve our build systems (CMake, pip/uv) across large Python and C++ codebases.
• Take early prototypes through iteration and hardening all the way to customer use, in modest iterative steps.
• “Close the gap” on pre-existing infrastructure where needed, and evolve core platform components as the product grows.
• Partner closely with Physicists, AI researchers, Software Engineers, and Computational Geometry experts to turn research into dependable systems.

What We’re Looking For

Qualifications

• 8+ years of professional software engineering experience, with a strong focus on backend and infrastructure.
• Infrastructure & cloud: hands-on Terraform experience and production work on at least one major cloud (GCP, AWS, Azure, or similar).
• CI/CD: built and maintained pipelines with Jenkins or an equivalent CI system.
• Build systems: comfortable with build tooling such as CMake and Python packaging via pip/uv.
• Languages: proficient in Python, with working familiarity in C++.
• Scale: comfortable navigating and contributing to large, multi-language codebases.
• Have contributed to a production data processing or platform system.

We’re very excited to talk with you if you have

• Experience taking an early-stage prototype to a production environment, at a startup or national lab.
• Exposure to frontend development.
• Familiarity with 3D rendering or visualization technologies.
• Experience supporting ML or scientific-computing workloads (PyTorch, NumPy, CUDA, GPU infrastructure).
• Experience with containers and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes) and observability tooling.

Engineering Expectations

• Strong software engineering fundamentals; comfortable meeting software design standards to get code into a production environment.
• Capable of leveraging pre-existing infrastructure and “closing the gap” on occasion.
• Strong CI, regression testing, and validation discipline.
• Comfort evolving core platform and model infrastructure.

Why Vinci

Join a rare early-stage startup that has successfully moved a foundational product from research to real-world, production environments, already serving Tier-1 semiconductor and hardware customers.

Our Mission & Impact

Vinci is building the operator intelligence infrastructure that modern hardware programs rely on daily. We are scaling our solution to accelerate design validation from hours to seconds. You will build the infrastructure that lets our unified model architecture—currently running billion-voxel inference—scale and expand into the transient domain, a key frontier in modeling interactions, deformation, and dynamics.

Growth & Opportunity

This is a unique opportunity for technical and professional growth. You will help define a foundational abstraction layer early in the company’s trajectory. The team is small, friendly, and accessible, and you will be empowered to own and architect large pieces of the system alongside Physicists, AI researchers, Software Engineers, and Computational Geometry experts, including greenfield opportunities to expand Vinci’s core capabilities.

Leadership

You will work with spectacular technical leaders like CTO Sarah Osentoski and CEO Hardik Kabaria, whose vision is to greatly accelerate physics simulations with ML while retaining solver-grade accuracy.