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BasetenBasetenSan Francisco, CA

Software Engineer - Model APIs

Builds and optimizes Model APIs for high-performance AI model serving, focusing on inference capabilities, low-latency backend services, and GPU optimizations. Requires 3+ years in distributed systems with strong performance debugging skills.

180k – 360k/yr
Hybrid3+ YOEBackend Engineering

About the role

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and operate the Model APIs surface with focus on advanced inference capabilities: structured outputs (JSON mode, grammar-constrained generation), tool/function calling and multi-modal serving
  • Profile and optimize TensorRT-LLM kernels, analyze CUDA kernel performance, implement custom CUDA operators, tune memory allocation patterns for maximum throughput and optimize communication patterns across multi-GPU setups
  • Productionize performance improvements across runtimes with deep understanding of their internals: speculative decoding implementations, guided generation for structured outputs, custom scheduling and routing algorithms for high-performance serving
  • Build comprehensive benchmarking frameworks that measure real-world performance across different model architectures, batch sizes, sequence lengths, and hardware configurations
  • Productionize performance improvements across runtimes (e.g. TensorRT, TensorRT-LLM): speculative decoding, quantization, batching, and KV-cache reuse
  • Instrument deep observability (metrics, traces, logs) and build repeatable benchmarks to measure speed, reliability, and quality
  • Implement platform fundamentals: API versioning, validation, usage metering, quotas, and authentication
  • Collaborate closely with other teams to deliver robust, developer-friendly model serving experiences

Requirements

  • 3+ years experience building and operating distributed systems or large-scale APIs
  • Proven track record of owning low-latency, reliable backend services (rate-limiting, auth, quotas, metering, migrations)
  • Infra instincts with performance sensibilities: profiling, tracing, capacity planning, and SLO management
  • Comfortable debugging complex systems, from runtime internals to GPU execution traces
  • Strong written communication; able to produce clear design docs and collaborate across functions

Nice to Have

  • Experience with LLM runtimes (vLLM, SGLang, TensorRT-LLM) or contributions to open-source inference engines (vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, SGLang, TGI)
  • Knowledge of Kubernetes, service meshes, API gateways, or distributed scheduling
  • Background in developer-facing infrastructure or open-source APIs

Skills

Tensorrt-LlmCUDAKubernetesvLLMSglangTgiDistributed SystemsApi GatewaysService MeshesSpeculative DecodingQuantizationKv-Cache
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