Staff Engineer – Core Engineering

TrueFoundry; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 260,000 - 380,000; Full time

Job summary

TrueFoundry is seeking a Staff/Principal Engineer for its Core Engineering team in the United States. You will drive architecture for distributed cloud-native systems and lead critical design, performance, and scalability initiatives, while mentoring US-based engineers and collaborating with global teams.

The role combines world-class systems thinking with hands-on execution, shaping the product and ensuring governance across platforms used for AI workloads and model deployment.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of backend/systems engineering experience.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems and cloud-native architectures.
• Strong Kubernetes, containerized workloads, and infrastructure engineering skills.
• Experience with ML/GenAI applications or collaboration with ML/DS teams.
• Proficiency in Python, Go, or TypeScript.
• Strong observability, resiliency, and SRE understanding.
• Excellent leadership and communication for customer and engineering interactions.

Responsibilities

• Own system architecture for complex distributed cloud-native systems.
• Lead design reviews, code reviews, and incident responses.
• Collaborate with CTO and global teams on architecture and roadmap.
• Mentor and guide US-based engineers across initiatives.
• Drive technical debt cleanup, performance, and resilience improvements.
• Translate customer feedback into scalable engineering solutions.

Skills

Backend engineering

Distributed systems

Kubernetes

Cloud-native

Python/Go/TypeScript

Observability/SRE

Technical leadership

Tools

Kubernetes

Job description

About TrueFoundry

Every production AI system, whether it's powering customer support, writing code, analyzing financial data, or diagnosing medical conditions, needs the same foundational infrastructure. A way to route between models. A way to manage tools and integrate them securely. A way to orchestrate agents and enforce governance. A unified compute layer to run it all.

That infrastructure layer is being built right now.

We're TrueFoundry, and we're building it. We're looking for a Staff Engineer – Core Engineering to join the team.

The Problem We're Solving

Companies are moving beyond simple chatbots to production agentic systems. These systems route between OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and self-hosted models. They integrate dozens of tools via protocols like MCP. They orchestrate multi-agent workflows where agents coordinate with other agents.

The infrastructure to support this doesn't exist yet. You can't just duct-tape together a few API calls and call it production‑ready.

You need a control plane that handles:

• Intelligent routing with observability, cost policies, and fallback logic
• Centralized tool and MCP server management with security and lifecycle controls
• Agent orchestration with governance and guardrails
• A unified compute layer to run self-hosted models, custom tools, and agents

We've built two products to solve this:

AI Gateway is the control plane, five composable components (Prompts, LLM Gateway, MCP Gateway, Guardrails, Agent Gateway) that handle routing, orchestration, and governance.

AI Deploy is the compute layer, a Kubernetes‑based platform that abstracts ML workloads as standard software primitives, so everything runs on unified infrastructure.

We're Series A, backed by Intel Capital and Sequoia. Companies like CVS, Mastercard, Siemens, Paytm, Synopsys, and Zscaler run production AI workloads on our platform.

The Role

We are seeking a Staff / Principal Engineer to join our Core Engineering team as a senior technical leader based in the United States. You will:

• Solve some of the most complex Engineering problems and drive it alongside a team of engineers & ML researchers.
• Build a deep, holistic understanding of the TrueFoundry platform across all components and shape the product vision and implementation.
• Act as the technical face of engineering for customer-related discussions and escalations.
• Guide and unblock engineers across projects in the US region.
• Partner closely with our CTO and India‑based engineering team to drive system design, architecture, and implementation of complex products.
• Lead technical design, critical customer problem‑solving, and platform scalability initiatives end‑to‑end.

This is a high‑ownership, high‑impact role designed for an engineer who loves combining world‑class systems thinking with real‑world execution.

What You’ll Do

• Develop deep expertise across TrueFoundry’s platform stack — infrastructure, deployment systems, LLM/ML orchestration, observability, cost optimization, and more.
• Drive the system architecture and design for complex, distributed, cloud‑native systems.
• Act as the technical point‑of‑contact for enterprise customer engineering needs and escalations.
• Lead and participate in design reviews, code reviews, and critical incident responses.
• Collaborate closely with the CTO on architectural decisions, scaling strategies, and technical roadmap prioritization.
• Guide and mentor US‑based engineers across multiple initiatives, helping them deliver high‑quality, scalable systems.
• Identify and drive technical debt cleanup, performance improvements, and resilience upgrades across the platform.
• Bring a product engineering mindset, ensuring that customer needs and feedback translate into scalable engineering solutions.

Who You Are

• 8+ years of strong backend / systems engineering experience at top technology companies or startups.
• Deep expertise in distributed systems, cloud‑native architectures, and scalable system design.
• Strong working knowledge of Kubernetes, containerized workloads, and infrastructure engineering.
• Practical experience building or deploying ML/GenAI applications (or closely working with ML/DS teams).
• Skilled in programming languages such as Python, Go, or typescript.
• Solid understanding of system observability, resiliency design, and SRE practices.
• Strong technical leadership and communication skills — able to work with both customers and engineering teams.
• Ability to think strategically while also executing hands‑on when required.

Bonus

Experience supporting enterprise deployments of AI/ML infrastructure, model training, or inference systems.

Why Join TrueFoundry?

• Work directly with ex‑Facebook engineers and founders from IIT Kharagpur, UC Berkeley, and Y Combinator alumni.
• First‑hand exposure to building and scaling a deep‑tech startup—insights you’ll carry if you want to start your own one day.
• Be part of a fearlessly experimental culture focused on customer success and long‑term impact.

Flexible hours, learning credits, and the opportunity to work shoulder‑to‑shoulder with the co‑founders (Abhishek & Nikunj).