---
title: 'Software Engineer, Inference at Pulse'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-inference-pulse-san-francisco-gcqyhd80ej93'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-06'
---

# Software Engineer, Inference at Pulse

- **Company:** Pulse
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2025-07-30
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-06
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/pulse/d316e466-7dfe-42f5-af73-215892a658b4

## Job description

## Overview

Pulse is tackling one of the most persistent challenges in data infrastructure: extracting accurate, structured information from complex documents at scale. We have a breakthrough approach to document understanding that combines intelligent schema mapping with fine-tuned extraction models where legacy OCR and other parsing tools consistently fail.

We are a small, fast-growing team of engineers in San Francisco powering Fortune 100 enterprises, YC startups, public investment firms, and growth-stage companies. We are backed by tier 1 investors and growing quickly.

What makes our tech special https://www.runpulse.com/blog/pulse-approach-to-document-intelligence is our multi-stage architecture:

- Layout understanding with specialized component detection models
- Low-latency OCR models for targeted extraction
- Advanced reading-order algorithms for complex structures
- Proprietary table structure recognition and parsing
- Fine-tuned vision-language models for charts, tables, and figures

If you are passionate about the intersection of computer vision, NLP, and data infrastructure, your work at Pulse will directly impact customers and shape the future of document intelligence.

## What we are looking for

- 5 days in-office at our San Francisco office
- Eager to learn and adapt quickly
- Prior startup or founding experience is a plus

## What we are looking for

- 5 days in-office at our San Francisco office
- Eager to learn and adapt quickly
- Prior startup or founding experience is a plus

## About the Role

Specialize in low-latency, high-throughput inference for OCR and multimodal models. Own profiling, batching, and autoscaling across single-tenant and multi-tenant environments.

## Responsibilities

- Build inference services with smart batching and caching
- Optimize kernels, tokenization, and model graphs
- Evaluate vLLM, TensorRT LLM, and Triton tradeoffs
- Implement autoscaling and admission control with clear SLOs
- Own performance dashboards and capacity planning

## Requirements

- 3+ years in performance engineering or ML systems
- Strong Python, plus C++ or CUDA exposure
- Experience with GPU profiling and model serving

## Nice to have

- Experience reducing p95 and cost in production ML systems

Sponsorship Sponsorship available.

## Compensation and benefits

Competitive base salary plus equity, performance-based bonus, relocation assistance for Bay Area moves, daily meal stipend, medical, vision, and dental coverage.

## About Pulse

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Pulse provides a production-grade platform for unstructured document extraction, using OCR, layout analysis, and vision models to accurately process complex documents at enterprise scale.
- **Entity Type**: Private (Seed stage)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2024
- **Founders**: Sid Manchkanti (CEO), Ritwik Pandey (CTO)

## Core Business
- **Industry**: Enterprise document intelligence / AI-powered data extraction
- **Target Customers**: B2B – Fortune 10 enterprises, financial services, healthcare, insurance, legal, real estate, and AI-native startups
- **Mission**: Provide trust and scale in document processing for regulated environments through advanced OCR, layout understanding, and vision models.

## Products & Services
- **[Pulse Document Intelligence Platform]**: A unified API and on-premise solution that ingests PDFs, spreadsheets, presentations, images, and other unstructured documents. Features include layout-aware OCR, reading order algorithms, table/chart/figure extraction, handwriting recognition, and fine-tuned vision models for complex conversions. Deployable via Docker, Kubernetes, or internal API gateways in VPC/on-prem environments.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available (private company)
- **Key Metric**: Total Funding – USD $4.4M (Pre-seed $500K led by Y Combinator; Seed $3.9M led by Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross)
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Y Combinator, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross (Seed lead); processed over 1 billion pages for clients including Fortune 50 technology firms, top private equity, large insurance carriers, and AI startups.
- **Growth Signals**: Headcount grew 312.5% year-over-year (now ~12 employees); open-sourced PulseBench-Tab benchmark for table extraction; expanding hiring across engineering, sales, and research.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Security & Compliance Natively**: SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and BAA available – certifications verified by continuous audits, enabling use in strictly regulated industries.
- **Architectural Control**: Flexible deployment (private VPC, on-prem, hybrid cloud) with full data isolation, load balancing, and GPU acceleration for massive throughput.
- **Superior Document Understanding**: Proprietary pipeline that understands layout structure before OCR, reads multi-column/irregular layouts in human-like sequence, and handles tables, charts, and handwriting – outperforming traditional OCR tools.

## Strategic Focus
- **Scaling Enterprise Adoption**: Continue serving regulated verticals (healthcare, finance, insurance, legal) while expanding into new AI-driven workflows.
- **Product Development**: Advance vision models, table extraction benchmarks, and reading order intelligence to maintain accuracy edge.
- **Talent Acquisition**: Actively hiring for technical roles (ML Engineers, DevOps, Software Engineers, Inference, Forward Deployed) and GTM positions (Sales, Solutions Engineering), all in-person in San Francisco.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture & Environment**: Small, high-caliber technical team (12 people) with a focus on precision, reliability, and deep respect for complex enterprise workflows. In-office culture in San Francisco (on-site required).
- **Growth Opportunity**: Join a fast-growing startup (312% headcount growth YoY) backed by visionary investors; opportunity to shape the platform from the ground up in a high-trust environment.
- **Notable Perks**: Involvement with cutting-edge AI/OCR research, open-source contributions (PulseBench-Tab), and direct collaboration with founders and founding hires.

## Sources
1. [runpulse.com](https://www.runpulse.com/)
2. [LinkedIn – Pulse](https://www.linkedin.com/company/pulse-ai-corp)
3. [Built In – Pulse](https://builtin.com/company/pulse-runpulsecom)

## Other roles at Pulse

- [Solutions Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/solutions-engineer-pulse-san-francisco-xvbpw9y7sea0) — San Francisco, CA
- [Business Development Representative (BDR)](https://feeny.ai/job/business-development-representative-bdr-pulse-san-francisco-edj30ds4ekqw) — San Francisco, CA
- [Account Executive](https://feeny.ai/job/account-executive-pulse-san-francisco-ttp96zgtvq9e) — San Francisco, CA
- [Design Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/design-engineer-pulse-san-francisco-2fynj56rj2a0) — San Francisco, CA
- [DevOps Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/devops-engineer-pulse-san-francisco-azhdzq1g7tnw) — San Francisco, CA
- [Machine Learning Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/machine-learning-engineer-pulse-san-francisco-1mpg8kzfxach) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-pulse-san-francisco-8pas6rkv70jm) — San Francisco, CA
- [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-engineer-pulse-san-francisco-hdrm1hwzsff9) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer, Inference](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-inference-luma-sf-bay-area-9qwckat058wp) — Sf Bay Area, CA