Inference Systems Engineer

Modular, a Qualcomm company; United States; Hybrid; USD 148,000 - 270,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Healthcare coverage

Retirement plan

Employee stock purchase

Paid time off

Learning and development

Job summary

Modular, a Qualcomm company, is building the Modular AI platform to simplify development and deployment of models. We seek ML developers who can drive architecture in a fast-paced, collaborative environment, turning research into scalable production features.

Based in the United States, you will join a hybrid team in Los Altos, CA, working on distributed systems from metal to cloud. The role offers strong compensation, equity, and a culture of growth and impact.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of systems programming experience focusing on performance and distributed architectures.
• Strong API and abstraction design with ability to defend proposals.
• Proficient in Python, Rust, Mojo; deep understanding of software systems matters more than language syntax.
• Ability to diagnose pathological performance bottlenecks and translate into solutions.
• Proven ownership from implementation through production support.
• Active interest in research literature and building meaningful tools.

Responsibilities

• Lead cross-team architecture decisions on concurrency, data movement, and system boundaries.
• Develop flexible interfaces for open-source model developers and contributors.
• Design modular systems with clear contracts and testability for robust development.

Skills

Systems programming

API design

Python

Rust

Mojo

Performance optimization

Distributed systems

Tools

SGLang

vLLM

TRT-LLM

GPU programming

Job description

About Modular

At Modular, a Qualcomm company, we’re on a mission to revolutionize AI infrastructure by systematically rebuilding the AI software stack from the ground up. Our team, made up of industry leaders and experts, is building cutting-edge, modular infrastructure that simplifies AI development and deployment. By rethinking the complexities of AI systems, we’re empowering everyone to unlock AI’s full potential and tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

About Modular

At Modular, a Qualcomm company, we’re on a mission to revolutionize AI infrastructure by systematically rebuilding the AI software stack from the ground up. Our team, made up of industry leaders and experts, is building cutting-edge, modular infrastructure that simplifies AI development and deployment. By rethinking the complexities of AI systems, we’re empowering everyone to unlock AI’s full potential and tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges. If you’re passionate about shaping the future of AI and creating tools that make a real difference in people’s lives, we want you on our team. You can read about our culture and careers to understand how we work and what we value.

About The Role

ML developers today face significant friction in taking trained models into deployment. They work in a highly fragmented space, with incomplete and patchwork solutions that require significant performance tuning and non-generalizable, model-specific enhancements. At Modular, we are building the Modular platform: a next generation AI platform that will radically improve the way developers build and deploy AI models.

LOCATION

Candidates based in the United States are welcome to apply. To support growth and collaboration, those in earlier career stages work in a hybrid capacity at our Los Altos, CA. More senior staff can work out of our office in Los Altos, CA or remotely from home. Onboarding for new hires is conducted in-person in our Los Altos, CA office.

What You Will Do

This team's job is to identify the opportunities for unifying structures underneath today’s inference features, and turn them into the robust and flexible distributed-systems abstractions and building blocks to make tomorrow’s features ship faster and more robustly.

• Leading cross-team architecture-level decisions on concurrency, data movement, and system boundaries in a fast-moving in-house software stack spanning from the metal to the cloud.
• Developing flexible and extensible interfaces for open-source model developers and community contributors that are not just enjoyable to use, but implicitly promote best practices.
• Designing highly modular systems with clear contracts to create components with unambiguous ownership, testability, and scaffolding for robust agentic development.

What You Bring To The Table

• 5+ years of systems programming experience with a focus on performance, concurrency, and distributed architectures
• Strong instinct for API and abstraction design, and the ability to present a strong case for design proposals
• Comfortable working in Python, Rust, Mojo, or similar (in the agentic‑coding era, we believe deep understanding of software systems supersedes knowing language syntax)
• Intuition and ability to reason about pathological performance bottlenecks in complex systems, and translate that into concrete diagnostics and solutions
• Demonstrated ownership of software solutions from implementation through production support. You bring war stories from learning the hard way why defensive engineering is worth the extra investment.
• Genuine interest in the research literature and solid instincts for what's worth building

Helpful Experience

• Experience under the hood deep inside a high-performance ML inference system (vLLM, SGLang, TRT-LLM, etc.)
• Broad systems programming experience: lock-free and wait-free data structures, POSIX APIs and architecture, memory-layout aware optimization, NUMA-aware design, zero-copy transport, etc.
• Experience with graph-based (dataflow, actor) programming models and runtimes
• Experience with GPU or accelerator programming, especially optimizing around async scheduling and data transfer.

What Modular Brings To The Table

• Amazing Team. We are a progressive and agile team with some of the industry’s best engineering and product leaders.
• World-class Benefits. In order to attract the best, we need to offer the best. Your benefits package may include comprehensive healthcare coverage, retirement and savings programs, employee stock purchase opportunities, paid time off, wellbeing resources, family support programs, and learning and development opportunities. Please note that specific benefit packages may vary based on your location, you can read more about benefits offered by Qualcomm here.
• Competitive Compensation. We offer very strong compensation packages, including RSU grants. We want people to be focused on their best work and believe in tailoring compensation plans to meet the needs of our workforce.
• Team Building Events. We organize regular team onsites and local meetups in Los Altos, CA as well as different cities. Traveling 2-4 times a year is expected for all roles.

Working at Modular will enable you to grow quickly as you work alongside incredibly motivated and talented people who have high standards, possess a growth mindset, and a purpose to truly change the world.

The estimated base salary range for this role to be performed in the US, regardless of the state, is $148,000.00 - $270,000.00 USD.

The salary for the successful applicant will depend on a variety of permissible, non-discriminatory job-related factors, which include but are not limited to education, training, work experience, business needs, or market demands. This range may be modified in the future. The total compensation for a candidate will also include annual target bonus, equity, and benefits, with equity making up a significant portion of your total compensation.

For candidates who fall outside of the listed requirements, we nevertheless encourage you to apply as we may have upcoming openings that are lower/higher level than the ones advertised.