--- title: 'AI Engineer at Baseten' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/ai-engineer-baseten-san-francisco-2c7zvysvqzfx' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-13' --- # AI Engineer at Baseten - **Company:** [Baseten](https://feeny.ai/companies/baseten) - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Compensation:** $175k–$190k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** hybrid - **Posted:** 2026-09-10 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-13 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/baseten/64181d8a-960d-4aa4-8d98-3cb22b1e0616 ## 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](https://www.baseten.co/blog/announcing-our-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 Baseten's Compute org is in hyper growth. As it scales, the systems and workflows that keep supply and demand balanced across our GPU fleet need to get more sophisticated, and this role exists to make sure they do. Compute sits at the center of how Baseten allocates, forecasts, and manages the capacity that powers every customer inference request. The team that supports this work, C3, runs on a mix of internal tooling, manual processes, and systems that haven't fully kept pace with the scale of the problem. This role exists to close that gap. You'll design, build, and ship AI-powered workflows that give the Compute and C3 teams real leverage, automating the manual, repetitive, and error-prone parts of the capacity lifecycle so the team can focus on judgment calls that actually need a human. We want someone who can walk in, audit what exists today, identify what's missing or broken, and start shipping fast. You know when to reach for an existing internal tool and when to build something custom in Claude Code. You think two to three steps ahead about how the thing you build today fits into the broader capacity systems architecture tomorrow. And you bring a point of view on our stack, on what we should be building, and on where AI can do something existing tooling simply can't. ## RESPONSIBILITIES - Ship AI-powered workflows for Compute and C3: build the agents and automations that give capacity analysts, ops leads, and engineers real leverage, off-loading manual and repetitive work like data pipeline cleanup, migration troubleshooting, and capacity investigation. - Get insights in front of the team: turn fleet utilization, allocation, and demand-forecasting data into the dashboards, alerts, and recommendations that C3 and Compute leadership actually act on. A build isn't done until the team is using it. - Audit the stack and generate your own backlog: Compute runs on a mix of tooling with real overlap and real gaps. Walk in with a point of view, identify what's missing or broken, and prioritize without waiting to be handed a roadmap. - Ship team-productivity workflows fast: triage asks from Supply, Demand, and C3, find the low-hanging fruit, and build it. A good week looks like an ops lead asking for something Monday and having it live by Wednesday. - Know when to go custom: not everything belongs in a point-and-click tool. Spin up bespoke AI-powered solutions in Claude Code when the problem calls for it, and make that call with judgment, not default. - Think in systems, not solutions: every workflow you build has upstream and downstream implications across Supply, Demand, and Engineering. Anticipate them, design for them, and don't create technical debt someone else has to unwind six months later. - Integrate third-party APIs and internal systems to sync events and information across disparate tools: ensuring data flows reliably between C3, the CRM, and the systems Compute depends on every day. - Document what you build: if people can't find it, understand it, or trust it, it doesn't matter how well it works. ## REQUIREMENTS - 3+ years of experience in AI/automation engineering, workflow automation, or a technical operations role, ideally at a high-growth, AI-native infrastructure or B2B company - You've shipped production agents on Vercel. Build custom internal apps and agents on Vercel, with durable workflows and sandboxed execution, so what you ship runs reliably in production instead of as one-off scripts - Genuine fluency with AI coding assistants and agent tooling (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, or similar) - Direct experience with a CRM or system-of-record platform (Salesforce or similar) - A track record of owning end-to-end AI and automation workflows - Proficiency with integration and automation platforms (n8n, Zapier, Make, Workato, or similar) and a fundamental understanding of APIs and webhooks - Experience in high-growth technology companies, ideally in infrastructure, cloud, or operations-heavy environments ## NICE TO HAVE - Familiarity with GPU infrastructure, capacity planning, or fleet management concepts - Comfort building reporting and alerting on a data warehouse (BigQuery, Databricks) and BI layer (Sigma, Hex) — not as a data engineer, but as a consumer and builder on top of the data layer - Experience building with agent platforms (Gumloop, n8n, Notion Agents, etc.) and/or agent frameworks (Vercel AI SDK, Claude Agent SDK, Mastra, etc.) - Experience with high-stakes, operationally complex environments where mistakes have real business impact - Challenging work and exposure to the operational core of a fast-scaling AI infrastructure company ## 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. Apply now to embark on a rewarding journey in shaping the future of AI! If you are a motivated individual with a passion for machine learning and a desire to be part of a collaborative and forward-thinking team, we would love to hear from you. 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). ## About Baseten ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Baseten is an AI infrastructure platform that provides high-performance inference infrastructure for deploying, optimizing, and managing AI models in production. - **Entity Type**: Private (Series F) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2019 - **Founders**: Tuhin Srivastava (CEO), Amir Haghighat (CTO), Phil Howes (Co-Founder & Chief Scientist) ## Core Business - **Primary industry/industries**: AI Infrastructure / Cloud Computing / MLOps - **Target customers**: B2B, targeting AI-native companies, enterprises, and developers building and deploying large-scale AI applications. Notable customers include Abridge, Cursor, Lovable, Notion, and OpenEvidence. - **Mission or purpose statement**: Provide the tooling, expertise, and hardware needed for teams to bring performant AI products to market as quickly and reliably as possible. The company's core belief is that "inference is everything" and that the future of AI will consist of millions of specialized models embedded into every product and workflow. ## Products & Services - **Baseten Cloud**: A fully-managed, global deployment platform for AI models. Provides out-of-the-box performance optimizations, 99.99% uptime, and massive horizontal scale. Supports single-tenant and self-hosted (hybrid) deployments. - **Baseten Inference Stack**: The proprietary, underlying technology that powers the platform. Includes custom model runtimes (LLMs, embeddings, voice AI, image generation), advanced caching, custom kernels, and cutting-edge performance research. Claims 2x higher throughput and 10% lower latency for embeddings (BEI). - **Baseten Chains**: Enables granular hardware and autoscaling for compound AI systems, reportedly powering 6x better GPU usage and cutting latency in half. - **Frontier Gateway (Pre-optimized Model APIs)**: Allows users to instantly test and deploy pre-optimized versions of the latest open-source, custom, and fine-tuned models (e.g., Qwen, DeepSeek, GLM, gpt-oss). - **Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE)**: A service offering where Baseten engineers work side-by-side with key customers to build, optimize, and scale their models from prototype to production. - **Training on Baseten**: Allows users to train models and deploy them in one click on the inference-optimized infrastructure. - **Monetization API**: An inference API that allows model developers to monetize their models. ## Market Standing - **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not privately disclosed, but the company has raised a total of **$585M** in funding. - **Key Metric**: Annual revenue of **$7.0M** (as per LinkedIn). Total funding of **$585M**. - **Notable Investors/Partners**: IVP, Spark Capital, Bond, CapitalG, South Park Commons, Greylock. - **Growth Signals**: - Announced a **Series F** funding round (details not fully public in search results). - **Massive headcount growth**: 224.4% year-over-year, now employing 201 people. - **LinkedIn follower growth**: 199.9% year-over-year. - **Active job postings**: 112 open roles. - Acquired the company **Parsed**. - Backed by high-profile institutional investors including CapitalG (Alphabet's growth fund) and IVP. ## Competitive Advantages - **High-Performance Inference Stack**: A proprietary, deeply optimized stack focusing on ultra-low latency and high throughput for the most demanding Gen AI workloads (voice AI, real-time streaming, complex compound AI systems). - **Customer Obsession & Forward Deployed Engineering**: A hands-on, consulting-style approach with their FDE team, which builds deep, sticky relationships with high-value customers like Abridge and Notion. - **Global & Hybrid Cloud Flexibility**: Offers both fully-managed cloud and self-hosted deployments within customer VPCs, providing scalability and security for enterprises with strict data governance requirements. - **Founding Team's Deep Technical Credibility**: Built by former researchers and engineers who experienced the "deployment hell" of AI systems firsthand, giving them deep empathy and expertise in the problem they are solving. ## Strategic Focus - **Dominating the "Inference-as-a-Service" Market**: The company's core thesis is that inference will become the largest market ever created, and they are building the infrastructure to power it. - **Scaling for High-Volume, Mission-Critical Workloads**: Focus on reliability, performance, and cost-efficiency for customers who cannot afford downtime or latency (e.g., AI phone calls, real-time translation). - **Deepening the Technical Stack**: Continuously investing in performance research (custom kernels, new decoding techniques) and expanding capabilities into new areas like voice AI and audio streaming. - **Aggressive Hiring**: With 112 open positions and massive YoY growth, scaling the engineering, sales, and operations teams is a clear priority. ## Why Work Here - **Hard Technical Problems**: Engineers work on the most challenging problems in modern infrastructure—model serving, low-level GPU optimization, networking, distributed systems, and observability. This is a high-agency, high-impact engineering environment. - **High Growth Trajectory**: The company is experiencing explosive growth (224% headcount increase, active hiring). This offers significant career acceleration and ownership opportunities. - **Strong Engineering Culture**: Founded by engineers, for engineers. The culture emphasizes "first-principles thinking across the entire stack" and a "customer-obsessed" mindset. The employer rating on compensation, culture, and work-life balance is rated highly (5.0). - **Top-Tier Team & Investors**: The team has strong talent density with hires from Meta, Stripe, Google, NVIDIA, and Databricks. Being backed by top-tier VCs provides stability and a clear long-term vision. - **Hybrid/In-Office**: Based in San Francisco with a strong in-person or hybrid culture common for fast-moving infrastructure startups. ## Sources 1. [Company Website](https://www.baseten.co/) 2. [Careers Page](https://www.baseten.co/resources/careers/) 3. [About Us (Team)](https://www.baseten.co/about-us/) 4. [LinkedIn Company Profile](https://www.linkedin.com/company/baseten) 5. [Ashby Careers Portal](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/baseten) ## Other roles at Baseten - [Emerging Clouds & International Coverage Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/emerging-clouds-international-coverage-lead-baseten-san-francisco-7yewyrdmw6yx) — San Francisco, CA - [Recruiting Coordinator](https://feeny.ai/job/recruiting-coordinator-baseten-san-francisco-8yphn61fg8pe) — San Francisco, CA - [Data Centers & Powered Land Sourcing Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/data-centers-powered-land-sourcing-lead-baseten-san-francisco-z78fywrz0cx9) — San Francisco, CA - [Hyperscalers & Strategic Neoclouds Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/hyperscalers-strategic-neoclouds-lead-baseten-san-francisco-3gkss3f72n05) — San Francisco, CA - [NVIDIA, OEM & Chip Providers Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/nvidia-oem-chip-providers-lead-baseten-san-francisco-09dz3tcd254a) — San Francisco, CA - [Capacity Strategy & Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/capacity-strategy-operations-baseten-san-francisco-jcygyhk283va) — San Francisco, CA - [Global Capacity Manager - TPU Focus](https://feeny.ai/job/global-capacity-manager-tpu-focus-baseten-san-francisco-8nytw8bmtfna) — San Francisco, CA - [Global Capacity Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/global-capacity-manager-baseten-san-francisco-ht5tzsez9qqr) — San Francisco, CA - [Capacity Operations Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/capacity-operations-manager-baseten-san-francisco-y3x505g4b4sp) — San Francisco, CA - [Delivery Director, Capacity Programs](https://feeny.ai/job/delivery-director-capacity-programs-baseten-san-francisco-3atm4mfthp2s) — San Francisco, CA