Senior Software Engineer I, Inference

CoreWeave; Bellevue (WA); Hybrid; USD 139,000 - 204,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, and vision insurance

Company-paid Life Insurance

401(k) with a generous employer match

Flexible PTO

Catered lunch each day

Job summary

CoreWeave seeks a Senior Engineer in Bellevue, WA, to lead designs and improve system performance. This role requires expertise in distributed systems, cloud solutions, and Kubernetes, alongside strong coding skills in Python or Go. Successful candidates will mentor junior engineers and improve service reliability metrics while working in a hybrid environment. A Bachelor's or Master's degree in a related field is required, with competitive salary and a comprehensive benefits package including health insurance and flexible PTO.

Qualifications

• 3-5 years for IC3; 5-8 years for IC4 in building distributed systems or cloud services.
• Deep familiarity with networked systems and performance.
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes at production scale.

Responsibilities

• Lead design reviews and drive architecture within the team.
• Define and own SLIs/SLOs to improve reliability.
• Implement advanced optimizations like micro-batch schedulers.

Skills

Distributed systems design

Kubernetes

Python

Go

Networked systems performance

CI/CD

Observability stacks

Performance optimization

Education

Bachelor’s or Master’s in CS, EE, or related field

Tools

Prometheus

Grafana

OpenTelemetry

Job description

What You’ll Do

Senior engineers are area owners who lead designs, raise engineering standards, and deliver measurable improvements to latency, throughput, and reliability across multiple services. You’ll partner with product, orchestration, and hardware teams to evolve our Kubernetes‑native inference platform and meet strict P99 SLAs at scale.

About The Role

• Lead design reviews and drive architecture within the team; decompose multi‑service work into clear milestones.
• Define and own SLIs/SLOs; ensure post‑incident actions land and reliability improves release‑over‑release.
• Implement advanced optimizations (e.g., micro‑batch schedulers, speculative decoding, KV‑cache reuse) and quantify impact.
• Strengthen incident posture: capacity planning, autoscaling policy, graceful degradation, rollback/traffic‑shift strategies.
• Mentor IC1/IC2 engineers; review cross‑team designs and elevate coding/testing standards.
• For IC4: own an area spanning multiple services and teams (e.g., request routing & adaptive scheduling, cost‑per‑token analytics, GPU resource isolation).

Who You Are

• IC3: ~3–5 years; IC4: ~5–8 years industry experience building distributed systems or cloud services.
• Computer Science or
• Strong coding in Python or Go (C++ a plus) and deep familiarity with networked systems and performance.
• Hands‑on experience with Kubernetes at production scale, CI/CD, and observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry).
• Practical knowledge of inference internals: batching, caching, mixed precision (BF16/FP8), streaming token delivery.
• Proven track record improving tail latency (P95/P99) and service reliability through metrics‑driven work.
• Bachelor’s or Master’s in CS, EE, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).

Preferred

• Contributions to inference frameworks (vLLM, Triton, TensorRT‑LLM, Ray Serve, TorchServe).
• Experience with CUDA kernels, NCCL/SHARP, RDMA/NUMA, or GPU interconnect topologies.
• Leading multi‑team initiatives or partnering with customers on mission‑critical launches.

What We Offer

The base salary range for this role is $139,000 to $204,000. The starting salary will be determined based on job‑related knowledge, skills, experience, and market location. We strive for both market alignment and internal equity when determining compensation. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package includes a discretionary bonus, equity awards, and a comprehensive benefits programme (all based on eligibility).

The range we’ve posted represents the typical compensation range for this role. To determine actual compensation, we review the market rate for each candidate which can include a variety of factors. These include qualifications, experience, interview performance, and location.

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance – 100% paid for by CoreWeave
• Company‑paid Life Insurance
• Voluntary supplemental life insurance
• Short and long‑term disability insurance
• Flexible Spending Account
• Health Savings Account
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Ability to Participate in Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)
• Mental Wellness Benefits through Spring Health
• Family‑Forming support provided by Carrot
• Paid Parental Leave
• Flexible, full‑service childcare support with Kinside
• 401(k) with a generous employer match
• Flexible PTO
• Catered lunch each day in our office and data center locations
• A casual work environment
• A work culture focused on innovative disruption

Our Workplace

While we prioritize a hybrid work environment, remote work may be considered for candidates located more than 30 miles from an office, based on role requirements for specialized skill sets. New hires will be invited to attend onboarding at one of our hubs within their first month. Teams also gather quarterly to support collaboration.

Export Control Compliance

This position requires access to export controlled information. To conform to U.S. Government export regulations applicable to that information, applicant must either be (A) a U.S. person, defined as a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful permanent resident (green card holder), (iii) refugee under 8 U.S.C. 1157, or (iv) asylee under 8 U.S.C. 1158; (B) eligible to access the export controlled information without a required export authorization; or (C) eligible and reasonably likely to obtain the required export authorization from the applicable U.S. government agency. CoreWeave may, for legitimate business reasons, decline to pursue any export licensing process.

EEO Statement

CoreWeave is an equal opportunity employer, committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive workplace. All qualified applicants and candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, or genetic information. As part of this commitment and consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), CoreWeave will ensure that qualified applicants and candidates with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations for the hiring process, unless such accommodation would cause an undue hardship. If reasonable accommodation is needed, please contact: [e-mail].