Software Engineer, Research Infrastructure

United States Digital Space LLC; San Francisco (CA); Hybrid; USD 405,000 - 625,000; Full time

Job summary

United States Digital Space LLC in San Francisco is seeking an experienced software engineer to join the Research Productivity organization. You will help build infrastructure that accelerates research, scale systems, and support fast, reliable tooling for researchers.

You will independently scope multi-month projects, drive architectural decisions, and partner with research teams to anticipate changing needs.

Qualifications

• Experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems in production.
• Proven ability to scope and deliver complex, multi-month technical projects.
• Strong software engineering fundamentals and hands-on coding ability.
• Experience making architectural decisions that teams build on top of.
• Excellent written and verbal communication across multiple teams.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and scale infrastructure and systems to support increasing usage and evolving product needs.
• Independently scope and lead complex engineering projects from a starting point to a production system.
• Drive cross-organizational alignment on technical direction with stakeholders and teams.
• Make architectural decisions that shape research infrastructure and tooling across the company.
• Partner with researchers to understand workflows and design for changing requirements.
• Iterate quickly with pragmatic, first-principles solutions and fast feedback loops.
• Take ownership of reliability and scalability as load and complexity grow.
• Help set technical standards and mentor other engineers.

Skills

Distributed systems

Software engineering

Architectural decisions

Cross-team alignment

Communication

Ambiguity handling

Education

Bachelor’s degree

Job description

About the company

the company’s mission is to create reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. We want AI to be safe and beneficial for our users and for society as a whole. Our team is a quickly growing group of committed researchers, engineers, policy experts, and business leaders working together to build beneficial AI systems.

About the role

the company's Research Productivity organization builds the infrastructure and systems that accelerate research across the company, including the tools that help our research process get faster and more effective over time. We're looking for an experienced software engineer to join us as we scale this infrastructure at a moment when both demand and scope are growing extremely quickly.

This team operates like a startup within a startup. You'll be a strong fit if you like thinking from first principles, iterating fast on infrastructure, and tackling reliability and scalability challenges head-on as the products built on top of your systems evolve underneath you.

You'll independently scope complex, multi-month projects, drive cross-org alignment through ambiguous problem spaces, and make the architectural decisions that shape how the infrastructure behind our research tooling gets built. You'll partner directly with research teams to understand their workflows, anticipate how their requirements will change, and design and scale infrastructure that can keep pace.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and scale infrastructure and systems that support rapidly increasing usage, where requirements and workload continue to evolve as the products built on top of them evolve
• Independently scope and lead complex, multi-month engineering projects, from an ambiguous starting point through to a production system
• Drive cross-organizational alignment on technical direction, working through ambiguous problem spaces with multiple stakeholders and teams
• Make architectural decisions that shape the foundation of research infrastructure and tooling across the company
• Partner directly with researchers to deeply understand their workflows, then anticipate and design for how those needs will change
• Iterate quickly, favoring pragmatic, first-principles solutions and fast feedback loops over heavy upfront design
• Take ownership of the reliability and scalability of critical systems as load, usage, and complexity increase
• Help set technical standards and best practices for the team, and mentor other engineers

Minimum Qualifications

• Experience designing, building, and operating large-scale distributed systems or infrastructure in production
• A track record of independently scoping and delivering complex, ambiguous, multi-month technical projects
• Strong software engineering fundamentals and hands‑on coding ability
• Experience making architectural decisions that other engineers and teams build on top of
• Strong written and verbal communication skills, with experience driving alignment across multiple teams or stakeholders
• Demonstrated ability to operate effectively in ambiguous, fast‑changing environments

Strong candidates may also have

• Experience building infrastructure or platforms specifically for research or machine learning workflows
• Direct experience navigating the reliability and architectural challenges that come with rapidly scaling systems
• Experience with distributed systems, cloud infrastructure, and infrastructure‑as‑code
• Familiarity with the compute, tooling, and workflow needs of large‑scale machine learning research
• Experience operating in a startup or startup‑like environment, i.e. a small, fast‑moving team with high autonomy
• Prior experience as a technical lead or mentor for other engineers

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

For sales roles, the range provided is the role’s On Target Earnings ("OTE") range, meaning that the range includes both the sales commissions/sales bonuses target and annual base salary for the role.

Annual Salary: $405,000 — $625,000 USD

Logistics

Minimum education: Bachelor’s degree or an equivalent combination of education, training, and/or experience

Required field of study: A field relevant to the role as demonstrated through coursework, training, or professional experience

Minimum years of experience: Years of experience required will correlate with the internal job level requirements for the position

Location‑based hybrid policy: Currently, we expect all staff to be in one of our offices at least 25% of the time. However, some roles may require more time in our offices.

Visa sponsorship: We do sponsor visas! However, we aren't able to successfully sponsor visas for every role and every candidate. But if we make you an offer, we will make every reasonable effort to get you a visa, and we retain an immigration lawyer to help with this.

We encourage you to apply even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification. Not all strong candidates will meet every single qualification as listed. Research shows that people who identify as being from underrepresented groups are more prone to experiencing imposter syndrome and doubting the strength of their candidacy, so we urge you not to exclude yourself prematurely and to submit an application if you're interested in this work. We think AI systems like the ones we're building have enormous social and ethical implications. We think this makes representation even more important, and we strive to include a range of diverse perspectives on our team.