---
title: 'Software Engineer - Full Stack at FriendliAI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-full-stack-friendliai-seoul-2kvnfm2hejx8'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-05'
---

# Software Engineer - Full Stack at FriendliAI

- **Company:** FriendliAI
- **Location:** Seoul, South Korea
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-08-18
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-05
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/friendliai/4abd3a9b-b655-4095-a151-b6da2922f2f5

## Job description

## ABOUT FRIENDLIAI

FriendliAI is the fastest inference cloud for agents, built to run frontier open-weight models at scale in production. It delivers up to 7x faster output token speed, up to 90% lower inference costs, and 99.99% uptime across the most demanding agent workloads — long-context inference, real-time streaming, and accurate tool calling.

We are a small, fast-moving team doing work that matters at one of the most exciting moments in the history of technology. With our world-class inference stack, we are building the platform teams can actually rely on.

## ABOUT THE ROLE

We're seeking a Full-Stack Software Engineer to design, build, and scale our web platform, which serves as the core interface for deploying multimodal models, observing workloads, and building agent workflows. You'll own how customers experience the platform end-to-end- signing up, authenticating, managing access across an organization, and understanding what they're being billed for - from the services and data models through to the interface. In this role, you'll work closely with product, infrastructure, and design teams to create high-performance, developer-friendly, and enterprise-ready tools.

We are looking for a hands-on engineer who is eager to work across the surfaces of our application — authentication and access control, billing and usage, and the model deployment and inference features customers use every day. The ideal candidate has built backend systems where correctness matters, is comfortable carrying a feature all the way to the UI, cares deeply about developer workflows, and is excited to help define the future of AI adoption.

## KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

- Design, build, and maintain web applications and tools for AI model deployment, monitoring, and performance optimization
- Own authentication, organization management, and billing end-to-end.
- Develop clean, scalable, and robust APIs powering AI agents, workflows, and user-facing systems
- Collaborate with infrastructure engineers to integrate backend systems with deployment and orchestration pipelines
- Drive code quality through automated testing, CI/CD, and code reviews
- Contribute to architecture and design decisions that shape our platform's long-term direction
- Identify and resolve technical debt and improve system reliability in production systems

## QUALIFICATIONS

- 4+ years of industry experience in backend or full-stack engineering, with meaningful time spent on backend systems
- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or equivalent
- Production experience with authentication and authorization — SSO/OAuth2/OIDC, RBAC, API keys, and multi-tenant isolation
- Experience building billing or usage-metering systems: usage-based or subscription pricing, entitlements, quotas, or payment integration
- Fluent in Python and TypeScript; proficient with React/Next.js
- Strong backend experience with FastAPI or similar Python frameworks
- Proficiency in designing data models, writing SQL, and working with PostgreSQL; familiarity with OLAP systems such as ClickHouse
- Strong API design experience across gRPC/REST/GraphQL in production systems
- Solid foundation in cloud-native development
- Familiarity with OpenTelemetry tracing, metrics, and structured logging

## PREFERRED EXPERIENCE

- Experience with payment processors (e.g., Stripe) and usage-based or subscription SaaS billing
- Familiarity with enterprise identity requirements — SAML, SCIM provisioning, or providers like Auth0/WorkOS
- Familiarity with LLM-based workflows, tool invocation, or agentic systems
- Familiarity with Kubernetes for container orchestration, including deploying, scaling, and managing containerized applications in production environments
- Have worked in a startup or fast-paced environment with ownership
- Built developer-facing SDKs/CLIs
- Passion for developer experience and enabling AI adoption

## BENEFITS

- Flexible working hours
- Daily lunch and dinner provided; unlimited snacks and beverages
- Supportive and highly collaborative work environment
- Health check-up support and top-tier equipment/hardware support
- A front-row seat to the generative AI infrastructure revolution
- Competitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance, and other benefits.

## About FriendliAI

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: FriendliAI is The Frontier AI Inference Cloud, providing a highly optimized platform for deploying, scaling, and monitoring large language and multimodal models with unmatched speed and cost efficiency.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage; $26.7M total funding)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, United States (with offices in Seoul, South Korea and Redwood City, CA)
- **Founded**: 2021
- **Founders**: Byung-Gon Chun (CEO) and Gyeong-In Yu (CTO) – the researchers who invented the continuous batching technique now standard in AI inference.

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: AI Infrastructure / Cloud Inference Platform (Infrastructure as a Service)
- **Target customers**: B2B – enterprises and AI teams deploying generative AI and agent workloads at production scale; focuses on open-weight and custom models.
- **Mission**: Democratize access to production-grade AI so teams can focus on building great products.

## Products & Services
- **[FriendliAI Inference Cloud](https://friendli.ai/)**: A fully managed platform that instantly deploys 580,000+ Hugging Face models (language, audio, vision) with one click. Supports bring-your-own fine-tuned or proprietary models. Key features:
  - Custom GPU kernels, smart caching, continuous batching, speculative decoding, and parallel inference.
  - 2×+ faster inference than standard solutions, up to 3× faster than vLLM.
  - 50% to 90% cost savings relative to closed model APIs.
  - 99.99% uptime SLAs, geo-distributed infrastructure, enterprise-grade fault tolerance.
  - SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliant (March 2026).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not disclosed (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total funding $26.7M (two seed rounds: $6.7M in 2021 and $20M led by Capstone Partners in September 2025)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Capstone Partners (lead investor in latest round), plus two other investors in the first seed round.
- **Growth Signals**:
  - Headcount grew 90% YoY to ~45 employees (as of mid-2026).
  - Active job postings: 19 positions (up 1800% YoY) – strong hiring momentum.
  - Appointed Brian Yoo (former Moloco COO) as Chief Business Officer in April 2026 to drive hypergrowth.
  - Achieved SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA compliance in March 2026, opening regulated markets.
  - LinkedIn followers grew 257% yearly (8,221 followers).

## Competitive Advantages
- **Inventor of continuous batching** – the technique is now industry standard, giving FriendliAI deep technical expertise.
- **Purpose-built inference engine** that constantly evolves for state-of-the-art models, delivering 2–3× speed improvements over alternatives like vLLM.
- **Massive model library** – 580,000+ Hugging Face models deployable instantly with zero manual optimization.
- **Enterprise-grade reliability** – 99.99% SLA, SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA, multi-cloud scaling.
- **Cost leadership** – 50–90% savings vs. closed model APIs, maximizing tokens per dollar.

## Strategic Focus
- **Hypergrowth** – scaling sales, engineering, and solutions architecture teams globally (US and Korea).
- **Compliance and enterprise readiness** – recent SOC 2/HIPAA certification to serve healthcare and regulated industries.
- **Multi-cloud and geo-distribution** – expanding infrastructure footprint for global low-latency inference.
- **Open-weight and custom model support** – enabling model ownership and flexibility for enterprises.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Boldest innovations come from great teams” – passionate, humble, curious builders. Mission-driven to democratize AI.
- **Work policy**: Hybrid (San Francisco and Seoul offices); some roles are in-office (Seoul) or hybrid (SF). Employees engage in a mix of remote and on-site work.
- **Engineering focus**: Heavy emphasis on AI inference engine, GPU kernels, Python developer tools, AI agents, backend, and platform security. High technical bar.
- **Perks**: Not explicitly listed, but fast-growing startup with significant impact in the AI infrastructure space; opportunity to work on cutting-edge inference optimization.
- **Locations**: San Francisco (HQ), Redwood City, CA, and Gangnam-gu, Seoul – global team with cross-cultural collaboration.

## Sources
1. [friendli.ai](https://friendli.ai/)
2. [friendli.ai/careers](https://friendli.ai/careers)
3. [jobs.ashbyhq.com/friendliai](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/friendliai)
4. [builtin.com/company/friendliai](https://builtin.com/company/friendliai)
5. [linkedin.com/company/friendliai](https://www.linkedin.com/company/friendliai)

## Other roles at FriendliAI

- [Director of Product Management](https://feeny.ai/job/director-of-product-management-friendliai-san-francisco-vckbhh439mws) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer – Cloud Infrastructure](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-cloud-infrastructure-friendliai-san-francisco-z8fjtpn12kpn) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer - Cloud Infrastructure](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-cloud-infrastructure-friendliai-seoul-rf473fpa9850) — Seoul, South Korea
- [Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-friendliai-san-francisco-z6e1g3bcymfg) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer – Python Developer Tools](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-python-developer-tools-friendliai-seoul-z74wd9kp8fex) — Seoul, South Korea
- [Software Engineer – GPU Kernel](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-gpu-kernel-friendliai-seoul-yg1eq3ks7m5a) — Seoul, South Korea
- [Software Engineer – AI Inference Engine](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-ai-inference-engine-friendliai-seoul-8pdpe18z4ejk) — Seoul, South Korea
- [Customer Success Engineer (contract based)](https://feeny.ai/job/customer-success-engineer-contract-based-friendliai-seoul-9ang4dybr9c9) — Seoul, South Korea
- [Software Engineer - Senior Backend](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-senior-backend-friendliai-san-francisco-h5x2ghcnfrg7) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer – AI Agents](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-ai-agents-friendliai-san-francisco-7v0cdvt2ded6) — San Francisco, CA