Software Engineer - Model APIs

Baseten; New York (NY); On-site; USD 180,000 - 360,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive compensation including equity

100% medical, dental, and vision insurance

Generous PTO including Winter Break

Paid parental leave

Company-facilitated 401(k)

Job summary

A leading AI platform provider in New York seeks a Model API Engineer focused on infrastructure for hosted AI models. Responsibilities include optimizing performance, building benchmarking frameworks, and collaborating on robust model serving solutions. Ideal candidates have 3+ years in distributed systems and a strong background in backend services. With a competitive compensation range of $180K - $360K and a comprehensive benefits package, this role offers a unique opportunity to shape the future of AI within a diverse and inclusive team.

Qualifications

• 3+ years experience in building and operating distributed systems or large-scale APIs.
• Proven track record with low-latency, reliable backend services.
• Comfortable debugging complex systems, with strong written communication skills.

Responsibilities

• Design and operate the Model APIs surface with advanced inference capabilities.
• Profile and optimize TensorRT-LLM kernels for performance.
• Build benchmarking frameworks to measure real-world performance.

Skills

Distributed systems

Low-latency backend services

Performance profiling

Debugging complex systems

Strong written communication

Tools

Kubernetes

API gateways

Job description

About Baseten

Baseten powers mission‑critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting‑edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $300M Series E, backed by investors including BOND, IVP, Spark Capital, Greylock, and Conviction. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to to ship AI products.

The Role

Baseten’s Model Performance (MP) team is responsible for ensuring the models running on our platform are fast, reliable, and cost‑efficient. As part of this team, you’ll focus on Model API's — the infrastructure powering our hosted API endpoints for the latest open‑source models. This work spans distributed systems, model serving, and developer experience. You’ll join a small, high‑impact team operating at the intersection of product, model performance, and infra, helping to define how developers interact with AI models at scale.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate the Model APIs surface with focus on advanced inference capabilities: structured outputs (JSON mode, grammar‑constrained generation), tool/function calling and multi‑modal serving
• Profile and optimize TensorRT‑LLM kernels, analyze CUDA kernel performance, implement custom CUDA operators, tune memory allocation patterns for maximum throughput and optimize communication patterns across multi‑GPU setups
• Productionize performance improvements across runtimes with deep understanding of their internals: speculative decoding implementations, guided generation for structured outputs, custom scheduling and routing algorithms for high‑performance serving
• Build comprehensive benchmarking frameworks that measure real‑world performance across different model architectures, batch sizes, sequence lengths, and hardware configurations
• Productionize performance improvements across runtimes (e.g. TensorRT, TensorRT‑LLM): speculative decoding, quantization, batching, and KV‑cache reuse.
• Instrument deep observability (metrics, traces, logs) and build repeatable benchmarks to measure speed, reliability, and quality.
• Implement platform fundamentals: API versioning, validation, usage metering, quotas, and authentication.
• Collaborate closely with other teams to deliver robust, developer‑friendly model serving experiences.

Requirements

• 3+ years experience building and operating distributed systems or large‑scale APIs.
• Proven track record of owning low‑latency, reliable backend services (rate‑limiting, auth, quotas, metering, migrations).
• Infra instincts with performance sensibilities: profiling, tracing, capacity planning, and SLO management.
• Comfortable debugging complex systems, from runtime internals to GPU execution traces.
• Strong written communication; able to produce clear design docs and collaborate across functions.

Nice to Have

• Experience with LLM runtimes (vLLM, SGLang, TensorRT‑LLM) or contributions to open‑source inference engines (vLLM, TensorRT‑LLM, SGLang, TGI)
• Knowledge of Kubernetes, service meshes, API gateways, or distributed scheduling.
• Background in developer‑facing infrastructure or open‑source APIs.
• We value infra‑leaning generalists who bring strong engineering fundamentals and curiosity. ML experience is a plus, but not required.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation, including meaningful equity.
• 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance for employee and dependents
• Generous PTO policy including company wide Winter Break (our offices are closed from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day!)
• Paid parental leave
• Company‑facilitated 401(k)
• Exposure to a variety of ML startups, offering unparalleled learning and networking opportunities.

Apply now to embark on a rewarding journey in shaping the future of AI! If you are a motivated individual with a passion for machine learning and a desire to be part of a collaborative and forward‑thinking team, we would love to hear from you.

At Baseten, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status.

Compensation Range: $180K - $360K