Software Engineer - Model Performance

About the role

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 to ship AI products.

Responsibilities

• Implement, refine, and productionize cutting-edge techniques (quantization, speculative decoding, kv cache reuse, chunked prefill and LoRA) for ML model inference and infrastructure.
• Deep dive into underlying codebases of TensorRT, PyTorch, TensorRT-LLM, vllm, sglang, CUDA, and other libraries to debug ML performance issues.
• Apply and scale optimization techniques across a wide range of ML models, particularly large language models.
• Collaborate with a diverse team to design and implement innovative solutions.
• Own projects from idea to production.

Requirements

• Bachelor's, Master's, or Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or related field.
• Experience with one or more general-purpose programming languages, such as Python or C++.
• Familiarity with LLM optimization techniques (e.g., quantization, speculative decoding, continuous batching).
• Strong familiarity with ML libraries, especially PyTorch, TensorRT, or TensorRT-LLM.
• Demonstrated interest and experience in LLM’s.
• Deep understanding of GPU architecture.
• Bonus: Proficiency in enhancing the performance of software systems, particularly in the context of large language models (LLMs).
• Experience with CUDA or similar technologies.
• Deep understanding of software engineering principles and a proven track record of developing and deploying AI/ML inference solutions.
• Experience with Docker and Kubernetes.

Benefits

• Competitive compensation, including meaningful equity.
• 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.
• Company-facilitated 401(k).
• Exposure to a variety of ML startups, offering unparalleled learning and networking opportunities.