Staff Software Engineer, Foundational Model Serving

About the role

Foundation Model Serving is the API Product for hosting and serving frontier AI model inference for open source models like Llama, Qwen, and GPT OSS as well as proprietary models like Claude and OpenAI GPT. For this role, no prior ML or AI experience is necessary. We’re looking for engineers who have owned high scale operational sensitive systems like customer facing APIs, Edge Gateways, ML Inference, or similar services and have an interest in getting deep building LLM APIs and runtimes at scale.

Responsibilities

• Design and implement core systems and APIs that power Databricks Foundation Model Serving, ensuring scalability, reliability, and operational excellence.
• Partner with product and engineering leadership to define the technical roadmap and long-term architecture for serving workloads.
• Influence architectural decisions and trade-offs to optimize performance, throughput, autoscaling, and operational efficiency for GPU serving workloads.
• Create key components across the serving infrastructure — from working in systems like vLLM and SGLang to creating token based rate limiters and optimizers — ensuring smooth and efficient operations at scale.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with product, platform, and research teams to translate customer needs into reliable and performant systems.
• Establish best practices for code quality, testing, and operational readiness, and mentor other engineers through design reviews and technical guidance.
• Represent the team in cross-organizational technical discussions and influence Databricks’ broader AI platform strategy.

Requirements

• 10+ years of experience building and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Experience leading high-scale operationally sensitive backend systems.
• A strong foundation in algorithms, data structures, and system design as applied to large-scale, low-latency serving systems.
• A proven ability to deliver technically complex, high-impact initiatives that create measurable customer or business value.
• Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate across teams in fast-moving environments.
• A strategic and product-oriented mindset with the ability to align technical execution with long-term vision.
• A passion for mentoring, growing engineers, and fostering technical excellence.

Qualifications

• No prior ML or AI experience is necessary.
• Interest in building LLM APIs and runtimes at scale.

Skills

• Experience with large-scale distributed systems.
• Leadership experience in high-scale operationally sensitive backend systems.
• Strong foundation in algorithms, data structures, and system design.
• Proven ability to deliver technically complex, high-impact initiatives.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.
• Strategic and product-oriented mindset.
• Mentoring and growing engineers.

Benefits

The total compensation package for this position may also include eligibility for annual performance bonus, equity, and the benefits listed above.

Pay

The pay range(s) for this role is listed below and represents the expected salary range for non-commissionable roles or on-target earnings for commissionable roles. Actual compensation packages are based on several factors that are unique to each candidate, including but not limited to job-related skills, depth of experience, relevant certifications and training, and specific work location.

Schedule

Details on the schedule are not specified in the job posting.