Software Engineer - Model Products

Baseten; Seattle (WA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 360,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Comprehensive health insurance (US)

Flexible PTO including Winter Break

Paid parental leave

Fertility and family-building stipend

401(k) plan (US)

Learning and networking opportunities

Job summary

Baseten is seeking a systems-focused engineer to own and optimize the Model APIs that power hosted endpoints for open-source models. You will work across distributed systems, model performance, and infra to define how developers interact with AI models at scale.

The role emphasizes low-latency, reliable backend services with experiments in scheduling, routing, and advanced inference features. You will join a small, high-impact team driving performance and observability.

Qualifications

• 3+ years experience building and operating distributed systems or large-scale APIs.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate the Model APIs surface with focus on advanced inference capabilities: structured outputs (JSON mode, grammar-constrained generation).
• Profile and optimize TensorRT-LLM kernels, analyze CUDA kernel performance, implement custom CUDA operators, tune memory allocation for throughput.
• Productionize performance improvements across runtimes with speculative decoding, quantization, batching, and KV-cache reuse.
• Build benchmarking frameworks measuring performance across model architectures, batch sizes, sequence lengths, and hardware configurations.
• Instrument observability (metrics, traces, logs) and establish repeatable benchmarks for speed, reliability, and quality.
• Implement platform fundamentals: API versioning, validation, usage metering, quotas, authentication.
• Collaborate with teams to deliver robust, developer-friendly model serving experiences.

Skills

Distributed systems

Back-end performance tuning

Clear technical communication

Tools

Kubernetes

API gateways

Tracing/tools for profiling

CUDA

TensorRT

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 $1.5B Series F, led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn 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 APIs — 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.
• Prior ML or LLM experience is not required. We’re looking for strong systems engineers with performance instincts - experience with model serving or inference systems is a plus
• 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 performance and reliability issues across complex systems, from application‑level behavior to runtime and infrastructure internals.
• 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.

Benefits

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

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.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law (by example, the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, where applicable).

Compensation Range: $180K - $360K