
Software Engineer - Observability at Baseten (San Francisco, CA)
Baseten· San Francisco, CA· $165k–$330k·
Role details
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
Baseten is seeking talented and experienced Software Engineers to join our Observability team within the Infrastructure organization. As an early member of the Observability Team, you will be pivotal in building and shaping the observability experience for our internal and external customers. By joining this team, you’ll have a direct impact on the reliability and operational excellence of Baseten's product systems. As Baseten scales its infrastructure across different cloud providers and diverse hardware, the volume and complexity of operational data is growing by orders of magnitude. This team is responsible for building high-throughput ingest pipelines, cost-efficient storage, and agentic diagnostic tools to ensure that we can detect, diagnose, and resolve issues in minutes rather than hours, even as the systems they operate become more complex.
RESPONSIBILITIES
- 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 instrumentation libraries, SDKs, and integrations that make it easy for engineering teams to emit high-quality telemetry from their services
- Drive alerting and SLO infrastructure that enables teams to define, monitor, and respond to reliability targets with minimal noise
- Partner with Inference, Product, and Infrastructure teams to ensure observability solutions meet the unique needs of each organization
REQUIREMENTS
- Have deep experience with at least one observability signal area (metrics, logging, tracing, or error analytics) and familiarity with the others
- Understand high-throughput data pipelines, columnar storage engines, and the tradeoffs involved in ingesting and querying telemetry data at scale
- Have experience operating or building on top of observability platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, ClickHouse, OpenTelemetry, or similar systems
- Have strong proficiency in at least one of Python, Rust, or Go
- Have excellent communication skills and enjoy partnering with internal teams to improve their operational visibility and incident response capabilities
- Interest in applying AI/LLMs to operational workflows such as automated root cause analysis, anomaly detection, or intelligent alerting
- Are excited about building foundational infrastructure and are comfortable working independently on ambiguous, high-impact technical challenges
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.