--- title: 'Infrastructure Engineer at Salient' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/infrastructure-engineer-salient-san-francisco-tqh62zx42aed' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-09' --- # Infrastructure Engineer at Salient - **Company:** Salient - **Location:** San Francisco, CA - **Compensation:** $200k–$300k - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-03-19 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-09 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/salient/cae6bf34-0e59-449d-86e8-02fd0e6cf0eb ## Job description ## ABOUT US Salient builds AI agents for regulated financial services. Our agents automate loan servicing, compliance, collections, recovery, insurance claims, and disputes for banks, captives, and specialty lenders. We are: - Backed by a16z and Y Combinator, with $75M raised in Series A funding - Cash flow positive and profitable, with mid eight figure ARR achieved in under two years - Already serving more than 20% of the auto lending industry - Processing millions of real customer calls and transactions every day - Fully deployed in production with major financial institutions - Actively expanding into new financial services segments - Building together in person in San Francisco We are deeply integrated with our customers, own the full technology stack, and move quickly to bring modern AI into regulated industries where precision, reliability, and performance matter. ## ABOUT THE ROLE We're looking for an Infrastructure Engineer to architect and own the systems that power Salient at scale. This is a high-impact IC role focused on infrastructure engineering - you'll define how we build, deploy, and operate the infrastructure that processes millions of real financial transactions and customer interactions daily. You'll set the technical direction for reliability, scalability, and developer velocity across the stack to make sure the platform can support whatever we're building next. WHY US? - We are one of the fastest-growing companies in the Voice AI space. We quadrupled our revenue last year and are now handling close to a million calls per day. - You’ll have an insane amount of ownership and be part of our journey as we undergo exponential growth, both in business and in engineering. - We are an AI-native company, constantly staying ahead of the curve in AI tooling and engineering best practices. You’ll play a direct role in driving this forward. - We have a no-BS culture that is hyper-focused on building a successful (and highly profitable) business. ## WHAT YOU'LL DO - Lead architectural decisions and technical reviews for infrastructure-critical initiatives. - Design, build, and own the cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP) that runs Salient - from compute and networking to storage and observability. - Develop scalable harnesses https://openai.com/index/harness-engineering/ that enable coding agents to operate reliably without compromising system stability or code quality. - Partner closely with the modeling team to optimize the serving and performance of GPU-intensive workloads. - Drive reliability and performance across the stack by defining SLOs, building robust monitoring and alerting, and leading incident response and postmortems. - Own developer platform investments that materially improve engineering velocity, including CI/CD, deployment tooling, environments, and internal infrastructure abstractions. - Establish infrastructure best practices, patterns, and standards as a technical authority across the engineering org. - Identify and reduce technical debt across infrastructure systems, with a focus on long-term scalability and operational health. ## WHAT YOU'LL BRING - 5+ years of software engineering experience, with 2+ years at the senior or staff level in infrastructure/platform roles, working on large-scale distributed systems. - Deep expertise in cloud platforms (AWS or GCP) - compute, networking, storage, IAM, and cost optimization. - Expert in infrastructure-as-code, with a strong track record of building scalable automation systems. - Extensive experience owning and scaling Kubernetes and CI/CD systems in high-throughput, production environments. - Track record of building and operating high-availability, high-throughput distributed systems with mature observability practices. - Strong technical communication - able to document architecture clearly and influence engineering decisions across teams. ## NICE TO HAVE - Background in security. - Exposure to serving AI/ML workloads. - Combination of big tech and startup experience. At Salient, we’re building at the edge of AI - fast, focused, and with real ownership. Sprints and major launches move quickly, and we look for people who are energized by that pace. Our team typically works around 60 hours per week, beginning at 8:00 AM, with four days spent collaborating in person at our San Francisco office. We also offer a benefits package designed to support our full-time employees: medical, dental, and vision coverage, a generous 401(k), and catered lunches. By applying, you acknowledge that your personal information will be processed in accordance with our Privacy Policy https://www.trysalient.com/legal/privacy-policy. ## About Salient ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Salient builds AI-native loan servicing agents that automate collections, disputes, and loss mitigation for US consumer lenders. - **Entity Type**: Private (Funded: $75M total raised) - **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States - **Founded**: 2023 - **Founders**: Mukund Tibrewala (CEO) and Arijit Malik (CTO) ## Core Business - **Primary industry**: Consumer lending / Fintech / AI workflow automation - **Target customers**: B2B – banks, credit unions, auto lenders, and fintechs operating in US consumer lending. - **Mission**: To lower the cost of credit for every American by building AI that is reliable, auditable, and compliant. ## Products & Services - **Taylor 2.0**: AI agent for inbound and outbound collections calls with native FDCPA, TCPA, and CFPB compliance. Handles end-to-end conversations, negotiations, and payment promises. - **Marshall 1.4**: Agent for GAP claim automation and appraisal-clause deadline management. - **Flyn 1.2**: Agent for dispute and chargeback resolution. All products are designed with borrower-level memory, cross-channel context, and exam-ready audit trails. ## Market Standing - **Valuation**: ~$500M (as of late 2025, per Y Combinator; conflicting reports may exist) - **Key Metrics**: - Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): $25M (per Y Combinator, 2025) - LinkedIn reports $4.7M annual revenue (likely earlier or GAAP vs ARR difference) - Daily active users: agents touch more than 1.5 million Americans every day - **Total Funding**: $75M across seed and Series A - **Notable Investors/Partners**: Andreessen Horowitz (led $60M Series A), Matrix Partners, Y Combinator; selected by JPMorgan Chase for Hall of Innovation - **Growth Signals**: Team grew 185% YoY to ~46 employees; 8 open roles as of mid-2025; expanded law repository and LMS-level compliance features in 2026 releases. ## Competitive Advantages - **Compliance-first design**: Built from the ground up inside lender operations to meet CFPB, state-level, and supervisory expectations. - **Borrower-level memory**: Every interaction updates a persistent profile across promises, hardships, disputes, and escalation history. - **Embedded origin**: Co-developed with some of the largest US consumer lenders – not a generic AI applied post-hoc. - **Audit-ready**: Full logging, exam-ready reporting, and rule-level control out of the box. ## Strategic Focus - Deepening product coverage for auto lending and expanding into more consumer lending verticals (credit cards, personal loans). - Strengthening compliance capabilities with expanded law repositories and LMS-level control. - Scaling deployments across existing launch partners and acquiring new bank/credit union clients. ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: Early-stage startup environment with deep domain focus; founded by former Tesla/Goldman Sachs (Mukund) and Airtable/Dropbox (Arijit). Emphasis on building inside the problem. - **Location**: San Francisco headquarters; roles listed as SF with a hybrid/office presence expected. - **Team**: ~46 people with heavy engineering/technical composition (46% of workforce). High autonomy and ownership. - **Perks/Notable**: Backed by top-tier VCs; opportunity to shape AI infrastructure for a highly regulated industry; roles span engineering, product, and operations. ## Sources 1. [trysalient.com](https://www.trysalient.com/) 2. [trysalient.com/company](https://www.trysalient.com/company) 3. [ycombinator.com/companies/salient](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/salient) 4. [linkedin.com/company/salientai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/salientai) ## Other roles at Salient - [Founder's Office](https://feeny.ai/job/founder-s-office-salient-san-francisco-v1nwwbzwvs4s) — San Francisco, CA - [Founding Product Designer](https://feeny.ai/job/founding-product-designer-salient-san-francisco-y809xaazpm2f) — San Francisco, CA - [Strategic Finance & Operations](https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-finance-operations-salient-san-francisco-4fk4vpbm69tm) — San Francisco, CA - [Full Stack Engineer, Front-End](https://feeny.ai/job/full-stack-engineer-front-end-salient-san-francisco-5ggw0z7ychdt) — San Francisco, CA - [AI Deployment Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-deployment-lead-salient-san-francisco-4myp38c0xp1b) — San Francisco, CA - [Technical Recruiter](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-recruiter-salient-san-francisco-0kpdk6ged8e8) — San Francisco, CA - [Applied AI Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/applied-ai-engineer-salient-san-francisco-f3xrvzdyawaq) — San Francisco, CA - [Software Engineer, Product](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-product-salient-san-francisco-9g5sfd1t4zp5) — San Francisco, CA - [Head of People](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-people-salient-san-francisco-25521af0w19p) — San Francisco, CA - [Sr Software Engineer, Product](https://feeny.ai/job/sr-software-engineer-product-salient-san-francisco-zda7ajc64zpt) — San Francisco, CA