Staff Software Engineer (AI)

TL;DR

Staff Software Engineer (AI): Building and optimizing high-scale LLM inference infrastructure for enterprise customers with an accent on reliability, latency, and efficiency. Focus on distributed AI workloads, GPU orchestration, and developing seamless end-to-end model serving experiences.

Location: San Francisco, California

Salary: $190,000 — $265,000 USD

Company

Databricks is a data and AI company providing a Data Intelligence Platform to unify data, analytics, and AI for over 10,000 organizations worldwide.

What you will do

• Build LLM infrastructure powering large-scale inference workloads using both partner and self-hosted models.
• Improve the reliability, latency, and efficiency of distributed AI workloads.
• Collaborate with platform, infrastructure, and ML teams to deliver seamless end-to-end experiences.
• Shape how developers and data scientists build and interact with AI on the Databricks platform.

Requirements

• 8+ years of experience in backend or infrastructure engineering.
• Experience with distributed systems, scalable APIs, or cloud-native infrastructure.
• Experience with real-time serving, ML infrastructure, or GPU orchestration.
• Familiarity with service-oriented architecture, deployment pipelines, and system observability.

Nice to have

• Exposure to platforms like SageMaker, Vertex AI, or Azure ML.
• Contributions to OSS projects such as MLflow, PyTorch, Ray, vLLM, or SGLang.
• Experience building developer platforms or internal tools supporting AI workflows.

Culture & Benefits

• High-agency, high-visibility team operating at the frontier of AI infrastructure.
• Engineering-led culture focused on solving the world's toughest technical challenges.
• Comprehensive benefits and perks tailored to employee needs across different regions.
• Strong commitment to diversity, inclusion, and equal opportunity employment.