Technical Program Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering

Baseten; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

100% medical/dental/vision for US

Flexible PTO

Parental leave

Fertility and family-building stipend

401(k)

Learning and networking opportunities

Job summary

Baseten is building the operating system for fast-growing AI teams. We seek a Forward Deployed Engineer to own complex programs across multiple engineering squads and customers, turning field learnings into platform improvements.

You will work directly with top customers and leadership to design scalable processes, reduce toil, and drive successful large-scale deployments of AI inference workloads. This role demands technical depth, strategic thinking, and close collaboration across teams.

Qualifications

• 5+ years as a TPM (or engineer turned TPM) on infrastructure, cloud or customer-facing technical programs.
• Technical depth: ML Infra, Kubernetes, GPUs and distributed systems; familiarity with incident channels or design docs; LLM inference is a plus.
• Experience running programs across many teams without formal authority.
• Calm under escalation; bring structure to chaos and close the loop.
• Clear and concise written communication for engineers and execs.
• High ownership; prefer fixing processes over workarounds.

Responsibilities

• Run the priority account cadence for top accounts; manage daily check-ins and weekly reviews with leadership, ensuring zero surprises.
• Bridge connections across SA, Sales, Product, engineering, capacity and on-call with clear owners, cadence and SLAs.
• Drive cross-team programs for large customers, coordinating multi-team efforts and structured rollouts.
• Reduce toil and protect platform time by identifying and removing major obstacles.
• Own a metrics scorecard (account health, response times, toil, load per engineer) for leadership.
• Support scaling efforts: new-hire enablement, certification, and recruiting collaboration.

Skills

ML Infra

Kubernetes

GPUs

Distributed systems

LLM inference

Program management

Cross-team coordination

Clear communication

Ownership

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

Forward Deployed Engineering is Baseten’s swat team. We’re deeply technical, great with customers and fast, and we make the platform better with everything we learn in the field. FDEs take on the hardest inference problems for our most strategic customers: novel architectures, extreme scale, tight latency budgets. Then we turn those solutions into a platform no one can match.

We’re scaling the team quickly. We need someone to build the operating system that lets a fast-growing team of engineers stay focused on hard problems instead of coordination.

This is a high-visibility role with direct exposure to our largest customers and to company leadership. You’ll shape how a new kind of engineering team operates in the AI industry.

RESPONSIBILITIES

• Run the priority account cadence. Own the operating rhythm for our top accounts: daily hot-account check-ins, the weekly “forest view” review with leadership, and the account list itself with Sales leadership. Goal: zero surprise escalations to our execs.
• Make the bridges work. Our FDE team connects to SA and Sales, Product, engineering (inference, infra), capacity and on-call. You’ll make sure each connection has a clear owner, cadence and SLA, with no hand-offs falling through the cracks:
  • Account transitions between solution architect and FDE, with exit criteria and runbooks
  • Non-P0 escalations to engineering teams, tracked and burned down weekly
  • Customer patterns and gaps flowing into the product roadmap
• Drive cross-team programs for our largest customers. Coordinate multi-team efforts such as dedicated-capacity rollouts, cluster migrations, capacity reservations and large customer launches. Bring together various teams so these run on a plan, not on heroics.
• Reduce toil and protect platform time. Track where engineering time goes: incidents another team owns, manual routing and config changes, after-hours pages. Work with engineering leads to remove the biggest sources of obstacles, so FDEs keep 30% of their time for shaping the platform.
• Own the metrics. Build and report the metrics scorecard (account health, response times, toil, load per engineer, team health) to leadership.
• Help us scale the team. Drive programs like new-hire enablement and certification, account load balancing, and run book coverage. Partner with Recruiting on hiring operations as we grow.
• Manage risk and dependencies. Maintain a clear-eyed view of cross-team dependencies and risks; surface them early, drive mitigation, and keep leadership informed with honest, signal-rich updates.
• Communicate up, down, and across. Translate between deeply technical teams and senior leadership. Run effective program reviews and write the kind of crisp statuses that let busy people make fast decisions.

REQUIREMENTS

• 5+ years as a TPM (or engineer turned TPM) on infrastructure, cloud or customer-facing technical programs
• Technical depth: you’re comfortable with ML Infra systems, Kubernetes, GPUs and distributed systems, and can follow an incident channel or a design doc without a translator. Experience with LLM inference is a strong plus.
• You’ve run programs across many teams at once and kept them moving without formal authority
• Calm in the middle of an escalation: you bring structure to chaos and close the loop
• You write clearly and concisely, for engineers and for execs
• High ownership, and you’d rather fix the process than work around it

NICE-TO-HAVES

• Experience working on AI / ML Infra stack.
• Background in solutions engineering, SRE or forward-deployed teams

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

• In your first few months, you'll have taken ownership of one or more in-flight programs, established the operating rhythm they were missing, and built the trust that makes teams want you in the room.
• Within a year, the programs you run are the ones leadership doesn't worry about, because the structure is clear, the risks are visible early, and the follow-ups always close.

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.

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).