# SWE - Backend Infrastructure Engineer

**Company:** [Sesame](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/sesame)
**Location:** San Francisco, CA, Bellevue, WA, New York, NY
**Role:** DevOps / SRE
**Salary:** $175k – $280k/yr
**Experience:** 3+ years
**Skills:** Kubernetes, Terraform, PyTorch, ML Infrastructure, Infrastructure As Code, Observability, Monitoring, APIs, Automation, Torchserve, Seldon, Kserve, Ray Serve, Data Pipelines, Real-Time Systems
**Posted:** 2026-05-05

> Builds and scales core infrastructure including ML training/serving, Kubernetes clusters, and low-latency voice/audio pipelines. Requires 3+ years in infrastructure/ML systems, hands-on reliability engineering, and Kubernetes expertise.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Design and build secure, maintainable, self-serve core infrastructure that engineering teams can rely on and operate independently
- Architect and evolve a modern ML training infrastructure — scalable, reproducible, and built for rapid experimentation
- Build and operate a modern model serving architecture with a focus on reliability, cost efficiency, and low latency
- Own and scale the low-latency voice interface and audio processing pipeline — a technically demanding, performance-sensitive system at the core of Sesame's product
- Build developer tooling, server infrastructure, and data infrastructure that is high leverage and low maintenance
- Set technical direction within your domain, bring others along through clear communication and well-reasoned proposals, and raise the engineering bar across the team

## Required Qualifications
- A strong systems thinker who is equally comfortable setting direction and getting hands-on with implementation
- Hands-on reliability engineering experience — you have well-formed convictions about observability, monitoring, deployment systems, and loosely coupled architectures, and you've put them into practice at scale
- Proven track record of shipping services at scale, with all the operational complexity that comes with it
- **Kubernetes** — significant production experience operating and scaling Kubernetes clusters
- Experience designing and shipping flexible domain models and APIs — you think carefully about boundaries, contracts, and long-term maintainability
- A default toward automation — you've consistently delivered efficiency gains through automation and have the track record to show it
- Strong communication skills — you can set your own direction, write clearly about tradeoffs, and bring engineers and stakeholders along with you
- **3+ years** of software engineering experience, with significant time in infrastructure, platform, or ML systems roles

## Preferred Qualifications
- Infrastructure as Code at scale — significant IaC experience, preferably **Terraform**; CloudFormation, Pulumi, or Kubernetes-based approaches also welcome
- ML infrastructure — **PyTorch** experience, especially model optimization for serving; ML training or serving experience; building ML serving and/or training infrastructure (**TorchServe**, **Seldon**, **KServe**, **Ray Serve**); large-scale distributed training and serving systems
- Data engineering — pipeline design, dataset management, or data platform experience
- Database design — complex schema design, query optimization, and hard data modeling decisions across relational and non-relational stores
- Real-time communication systems — low-latency audio, video, or streaming infrastructure

## Benefits
- 401(k) max employer match: 3.5% of compensation
- 100% employer-paid health, vision, and dental benefits for you and your dependents
- Unlimited PTO and sick time
- Flexible spending account with employer matching up to $1,650/year (medical FSA)
- Guardian Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
- Opportunity to share in the company's success with competitive stock options

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**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/2fb5751d-dec2-4824-81fb-e88e0bebf1e6