---
title: 'Software Engineer - Compute and Isolation at Baseten'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-compute-and-isolation-baseten-san-francisco-4zeeahr0yxfe'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-11-01'
---

# Software Engineer - Compute and Isolation at Baseten

- **Company:** [Baseten](https://feeny.ai/companies/baseten)
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $165k–$330k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** hybrid
- **Posted:** 2026-10-26
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-11-01
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/baseten/7c0ba27d-2f09-42f2-9277-1b756076b00b

## 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

Every agent on Baseten Sandboxes gets its own microVM, where it writes and runs code, calls tools, and keeps state across long tasks. Agents pause and resume constantly, so the machine underneath has to start, stop, snapshot, fork, and resume fast, and keep every tenant isolated while it does. General-purpose virtualization was not built for that workload. The Agent Infra team builds that layer. Sandboxes run in microVMs with custom Linux kernels on bare-metal servers we operate. You'll own how sandboxes start, stop, snapshot, fork, and resume, and how they perform on each host's CPU and memory, down to the hardware. You'll also own the guest and host side of each sandbox: its identity, how it attaches to different storage classes for performance or capabilities, and the virtual devices that connect it securely to the network. In September 2026, Baseten [acquired Blaxel](https://www.baseten.co/blog/blaxel-is-joining-baseten-to-build-the-future-of-agentic-cloud/), whose microVM sandboxes are the foundation for [Baseten Sandboxes](https://docs.baseten.co/sandboxes). We are building a cloud, not just using one. That means designing for many tenants from day one and thinking through what each decision means all the way down to the datacenter. The team is small and ownership is big: we ship in weeks and months, not multi-year programs. If you've worked deep in KVM and Firecracker, Cloud Hypervisor, or QEMU and want to build the computers AI agents run on, we'd love to talk.

## EXAMPLE INITIATIVES

- [Blaxel is joining Baseten to build the future of agentic infrastructure](https://www.baseten.co/blog/blaxel-is-joining-baseten-to-build-the-future-of-agentic-cloud/)
- [Securing the open frontier with NVIDIA OpenShell and Blaxel sandboxes](https://www.baseten.co/blog/announcing-carbon/)
- [Baseten Sandboxes documentation](https://docs.baseten.co/sandboxes)

## RESPONSIBILITIES

- Own the microVM lifecycle for agent sandboxes: start, stop, suspend, resume, snapshot, and fork
- Build and tune the custom guest kernels sandboxes run on
- Tune host CPU and memory configuration so sandboxes run fast and safely on each type of hardware we operate
- Manage host-level resources and sandbox density on each machine
- Own startup and resume performance end to end, from VM boot or snapshot restore to the first command
- Own the guest and host side of each sandbox: its identity, how it attaches to storage, and the virtual devices that connect it to the network
- Design isolation for multi-tenant workloads where the hypervisor is the security boundary
- Debug virtualization and isolation issues at scale, from userspace through the kernel to the hardware
- Contribute architecture decisions and code back to the open-source projects we build on

## REQUIREMENTS

- Hands-on experience with KVM, plus Firecracker, Cloud Hypervisor, or QEMU
- Deep understanding of Linux internals: namespaces, cgroups, memory management, and the boot path
- Experience building cloud infrastructure as the provider (multi-tenant compute that customers run on), not only running workloads on a cloud provider
- Experience building multi-tenant infrastructure where isolation is a security boundary
- Strong systems programming background in Rust and/or Go; C/C++ also welcome
- Experience debugging performance and correctness problems across userspace and kernel boundaries
- You move fast and like owning a problem end to end on a small team

## NICE TO HAVE

- Contributions to KVM, Firecracker, Cloud Hypervisor, QEMU, rust-vmm, or the Linux kernel
- Experience with Xen
- Working knowledge of container runtimes and sandboxing (containerd, runc, gVisor, Kata Containers)
- Experience with VM snapshot and restore, fast VM resume, or building and tuning custom Linux kernels
- Experience running virtualization on bare metal and tuning for specific CPU and memory architectures
- Experience building a sandbox, serverless, or function runtime product
- Familiarity with Linux performance tooling such as eBPF, perf, and ftrace

## 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).

## 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

- [Recruiting Operations Specialist](https://feeny.ai/job/recruiting-operations-specialist-baseten-san-francisco-zm2cq8041gzn) — San Francisco, CA
- [Technical Product Marketing Manager](https://feeny.ai/job/technical-product-marketing-manager-baseten-san-francisco-r68c2ev79k0h) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer - Storage Systems (Agent Infra)](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-storage-systems-agent-infra-baseten-san-francisco-kzp8s7crqzqd) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer - Networking (Agent Infra)](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-networking-agent-infra-baseten-san-francisco-sv41mcqejb10) — San Francisco, CA
- [Solutions Architect, EMEA](https://feeny.ai/job/solutions-architect-emea-baseten-7wm26ab3zv3k)
- [Strategic Compute Investments](https://feeny.ai/job/strategic-compute-investments-baseten-san-francisco-21bc8fbgrxt9) — San Francisco, CA
- [Global Equity Programs Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/global-equity-programs-lead-baseten-san-francisco-amsf677xyj3z) — San Francisco, CA
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- [Software Engineer - Billing & Internal Tooling](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-billing-internal-tooling-baseten-san-francisco-sw5zf1a8c1kw) — San Francisco, CA