Baseten

Product Platform - Backend Engineer at Baseten (San Francisco, CA)

Baseten· San Francisco, CA· $165k–$330k·

Role details

Salary
$165k–$330k
Work type
Hybrid
Employment
Full-Time
Equity
Yes

Baseten at a glance

AI inference platform for deploying, optimizing, and running machine learning models in production at scale.

Baseten runs trained AI models in production for other companies, handling the GPUs, autoscaling, runtime, and performance tuning so engineering teams get a fast, reliable API without operating the infrastructure themselves. It supports open source, custom, and fine tuned models across managed cloud, hybrid, and self hosted deployments.

$2B+ raised · latest: Series F · $1.5B · June 2026 (valuations of $13B and $11B across two tranches) · backed by Altimeter Capital, Conviction, Spark Capital, Sands Capital

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, led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to ship AI products.

THE ROLE

AI is being built by many companies at once. Model labs train more capable models, hyperscalers provide infrastructure and distribution, developers build new AI products, and a growing set of tools gives agents more to work with. Baseten sits at the center of all of it, as the inference platform that developers and large companies use to run AI in production. We’re hiring a backend/distributed systems engineer to join our Product Platform in following areas:

  • Commercialization, billing, and partnerships
  • Developer productivity and agentic development
  • Observability platform

Please come join our growing team to work on exciting problems. A few sample projects and responsibilities will include

  • Design and build scalable telemetry ingest and storage pipelines for metrics, logs, and traces across Baseten’s multi-cloud infrastructure
  • Own and evolve core observability platforms, driving migrations and architectural improvements that improve reliability, reduce cost, and scale with organizational growth
  • Build world class commercialization and billing systems
  • Work on some of the most strategic and exciting partnership integrations
  • Develop internal infrastructure and tooling that improves developer velocity, CI/CD, and deployment safety.
  • Own the internal AI agent platform end to end — architecture, build, rollout, operation, measurement.
  • Own Baseten's testing strategy end to end — define the standards, the tiers, and the tooling that engineering teams build against.
  • Drive adoption through developer experience — good defaults, clear docs, low friction — not mandate.
  • Improve platform reliability through better alerting, incident tooling, and production debugging workflows.
  • Lead technical design for cross-team projects and make sound tradeoffs between speed, quality, and long-term maintainability.
  • Partner with infrastructure, model performance, and product teams to understand what they need to see and ship faster.
  • Raise the engineering bar through code review, mentorship, and clear technical writing.

REQUIREMENTS

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
  • 5+ years of relevant industry experience, with a focus on building scalable backend systems and platforms.
  • Experience building or operating observability systems (logging, metrics, tracing) or internal infrastructure at scale.
  • Proficiency in Python, Go, Rust, or a similar backend language.
  • A firm grasp of quality and engineering principles: you understand both the what and the why.
  • Strong systems-level thinking: you understand how the components of a distributed system interact and how data flows through each part.
  • Platform mindset: you build for adoption and self-service, treat internal engineers as customers, and would rather ship a good default than write a style guide.
  • Excellent written and verbal communication skills.

BENEFITS

  • Competitive compensation, including meaningful equity
  • (U.S. only) 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
  • (U.S. only) 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).

Why work at Baseten

  • 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.

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