---
title: 'Staff Software Engineer, Backend Infrastructure at Sesame'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/staff-software-engineer-backend-infrastructure-sesame-san-francisco-tdycqy6e3tg8'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-12'
---

# Staff Software Engineer, Backend Infrastructure at Sesame

- **Company:** Sesame
- **Location:** San Francisco, CA
- **Compensation:** $175k–$280k
- **Employment:** full-time
- **Work type:** onsite
- **Posted:** 2026-05-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-12
- **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sesame/fa6a85fb-1f04-4f8e-b95f-e948ebef7fd7/application

**Skills:** Kubernetes, Systems Engineering, Reliability Engineering, Observability, Monitoring, Deployment Systems, Domain Model Design, API Design, Automation, Software Engineering, Infrastructure as Code, Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi, PyTorch, TorchServe, Seldon, KServe, Ray Serve, Distributed Systems

> Design and build secure, maintainable core infrastructure and modern ML training/model serving architectures. The role involves owning low-latency voice interfaces, scaling developer tooling, and establishing technical direction within the engineering team.

## Job description

## About Sesame

Sesame believes in a future where computers are lifelike - with the ability to see, hear, and collaborate with us in ways that feel natural and human. With this vision, we're designing a new kind of computer, focused on making voice agents part of our daily lives. Our team brings together founders from Oculus and Ubiquity6, alongside proven leaders from Meta, Google, and Apple, with deep expertise spanning hardware and software. Join us in shaping a future where computers truly come alive.

Responsibilities:

- Design, build, and maintain secure, maintainable, self-serve core infrastructure that engineering teams can rely on and operate independently.
- Lead the architecture and evolution of a modern ML training infrastructure — scalable, reproducible, and built for rapid experimentation.
- Build and operate a modern model serving architecture with a focus on reliability, cost efficiency, and low latency.
- Lead and own the low-latency voice interface and audio processing pipeline — a technically demanding, performance-sensitive system at the core of Sesame's product.
- Build developer tooling, server infrastructure, and data infrastructure that is high leverage and low maintenance — the kind that makes other engineers faster without creating new dependencies on you.
- Lead technical direction within your domain, bring others along through clear communication and well-reasoned proposals, and raise the engineering bar across the team.

Required Qualifications:

- A strong systems thinker who is equally comfortable leading technical direction and getting hands-on with implementation.
- 7+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time in infrastructure, platform, or ML systems roles.
- Hands-on reliability engineering experience — you have well-formed convictions about observability, monitoring, deployment systems, and loosely coupled architectures, and you've put them into practice at scale.
- Proven track record of building and shipping services at scale, with all the operational complexity that comes with it.
- Kubernetes — significant production experience building, operating, and scaling Kubernetes clusters.
- Experience designing and shipping flexible domain models and APIs — you think carefully about boundaries, contracts, and long-term maintainability.
- A default toward automation — you've consistently built efficiency gains through automation and have the track record to show it.
- Strong communication skills — you can lead your own direction, write clearly about tradeoffs, and bring engineers and stakeholders along with you.

Preferred Qualifications: We'd love to hear about experience in any of these areas — we don't expect any one person to have all of them:

- Infrastructure as Code at scale — significant IaC experience, preferably Terraform; CloudFormation, Pulumi, or Kubernetes-based approaches also welcome. Ideally you've led, architected, or contributed to a multi-stack, self-serve IaC system and understand the challenges of building infra that teams can own independently.
- ML infrastructure — any combination of the following:
- PyTorch experience, especially model optimization for serving.
- ML training or serving experience in general.
- Experience building ML serving and/or training infrastructure (TorchServe, Seldon, KServe, Ray Serve, or similar).
- Experience building and leading large-scale distributed training and serving systems.
- Data engineering — pipeline design, dataset management, or data platform experience.
- Database design — complex schema design, query optimization, and hard data modeling decisions across relational and non-relational stores.
- Real-time communication systems — low-latency audio, video, or streaming infrastructure.

Sesame is committed to a workplace where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered. We welcome all qualified applicants, embracing diversity in race, gender, identity, orientation, ability, and more. We provide reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities. Contact careers@sesame.com for assistance.

Full-time Employee Benefits:

- 401 (k) max employer match: 3.5% of compensation
- 100% employer-paid health, vision, and dental benefits for you and your dependents
- Unlimited PTO and sick time
- Flexible spending account with employer matching up to $1,650/year (medical FSA)
- Guardian Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
- Opportunity to share in the company's success with competitive stock options

Benefits do not apply to contingent/contract workers.

## About Sesame

## Company Overview
- **One-liner**: Sesame is building lifelike, conversational AI agents integrated into lightweight eyewear, aiming to bring ambient intelligence to daily life.
- **Entity Type**: Private (early-stage, backed by prominent venture firms)
- **Headquarters**: San Francisco, California, USA
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Brendan Iribe, Ankit Kumar, Ryan Brown, Angela Gayles, Nate Mitchell

## Core Business
- **Primary industry**: Artificial intelligence / Voice assistants / Consumer electronics
- **Target customers**: Consumer (B2C) – individuals seeking hands-free, intelligent personal agents integrated into everyday eyewear
- **Mission or purpose statement**: “Bringing the computer to life” – creating a personal companion that understands you, with natural conversation and lightweight, all-day wearable hardware.

## Products & Services
- **Sesame Personal Agents**: Software-based conversational AI agents capable of natural dialogue, personality modeling, and multimodal interaction (voice, gesture). Currently in development; initial hardware (eyewear) targeted for 2027.
- **Sesame Eyewear**: Lightweight, all-day comfortable glasses with high-quality audio and hands-free agent access. Coming 2027.
- **Research Platform**: In-house deep learning research covering speech generation, personality modeling, multimodality, and scaled training infrastructure.

## Market Standing
- **Valuation/Market Cap**: Not publicly available. Unconfirmed reports suggest a potential fundraising round of ~$200 M (source: Techmeme via LinkedIn snippet). The company has not officially disclosed its valuation.
- **Key Metric**: Total employees ~70 (as of mid-2026), with +5.8 % monthly headcount growth.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: Backed by a16z, Sequoia Capital, Spark Capital, Matrix Partners, plus a collection of founders and investors.
- **Growth Signals**: 55 total employees on BuiltIn (likely older data); 63 active job postings (+14.5 % monthly trend); monthly LinkedIn follower growth of +3.8 % (20,969 followers). Talent sources include Meta, Apple, Google, DeepMind, and Microsoft.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Interdisciplinary approach**: Tightly integrated hardware, software, and ML teams (hardware engineers, ML researchers, product designers) working on a unified product vision.
- **Founding team pedigree**: Led by Oculus VR veterans (Brendan Iribe, Nate Mitchell) and experienced AI/ML innovators, giving deep expertise in both consumer hardware and conversational AI.
- **Research depth**: Active push in speech generation, personality modeling, and multimodality, with scaled GPU infrastructure for training.

## Strategic Focus
- **Near-term**: Ship the first generation of personal agent software and finalize the eyewear device for a 2027 launch. Continue advancing foundational ML research.
- **Long-term**: Build a new category of ambient, always-available AI companions that replace traditional screen-based interaction.
- **Growth areas**: Expanding engineering team rapidly (63 open roles), especially in ML, embedded systems, iOS/Android, supply chain, and hardware.

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: Small, focused, interdisciplinary team with a clear vision. Emphasis on tight collaboration between research, product, and hardware. Described as “artists, makers, and engineers.”
- **Work environment**: In-office for most roles (San Francisco, Bellevue, New York). Roles are listed as “In-Office” (not remote/hybrid). Offices in SF, Bellevue, NY.
- **Perks & engineering culture**: Not explicitly detailed, but the company invests heavily in infrastructure (GPU clusters) and research. Strong engineering focus with roles spanning embedded ML, OS architecture, and developer infrastructure.
- **Notable**: Opportunities to work on cutting-edge voice AI and physical product design from the ground up.

## Sources
1. [sesame.com](https://www.sesame.com/) – Company overview and product vision
2. [sesame.com/team](https://www.sesame.com/team) – Leadership, investors, team description
3. [builtin.com](https://builtin.com/company/sesame-sesamecom) – Founded year, HQ, employee count, office policy
4. [linkedin.com](https://www.linkedin.com/company/sesameai) – Employee count, growth, talent sources, funding rumor
5. [jobs.ashbyhq.com](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/sesame) – Open positions and location details

## Other roles at Sesame

- [Product Engineering Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/product-engineering-lead-sesame-san-francisco-frrrpwp06s6z) — San Francisco, CA
- [Software Engineer - Backend](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-backend-sesame-san-francisco-m8vjteeqpd43) — San Francisco, CA
- [Executive Assistant](https://feeny.ai/job/executive-assistant-sesame-new-york-e0mdmkv43s9f) — New York, NY
- [iOS/Android Automation Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/ios-android-automation-engineer-sesame-san-francisco-yg3qrrfeze2g) — San Francisco, CA
- [Creative Director](https://feeny.ai/job/creative-director-sesame-san-francisco-ergm4698gggm) — San Francisco, CA
- [Research Scientist](https://feeny.ai/job/research-scientist-sesame-san-francisco-dn2g1qez13fh) — San Francisco, CA
- [Hardware Test Automation Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/hardware-test-automation-engineer-sesame-san-francisco-fvyd7w3bj32c) — San Francisco, CA
- [Head of Sales](https://feeny.ai/job/head-of-sales-sesame-san-francisco-8d0r15ne63nw) — San Francisco, CA
- [NPI Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/npi-engineer-sesame-taipei-ezvdh72dn9yg) — Taipei, Taiwan
- [Manufacturing Mechanical Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/manufacturing-mechanical-engineer-sesame-san-francisco-w823rcvz6t4s) — San Francisco, CA