Lead Software Engineer, Model Serving Platform
- Salary
- $230K - $300K
- Level
- Lead
- Work type
- On-site · San Francisco
Not stated in the posting: visa.
Open. First seen 2 October 2026.
About the role
Sciforium is an AI infrastructure company developing next-generation multimodal AI models and a proprietary, high-efficiency serving platform. Backed by multi-million-dollar funding and direct sponsorship from AMD with hands-on support from AMD engineers the team is scaling rapidly to build the full stack powering frontier AI models and real-time applications.
About the role
This is a rare chance to help architect and lead the development of Sciforium’s next-generation model serving platform, the high-performance engine that will bring a multimodal, highly efficient foundation model to market. As a senior technical leader, you’ll not only build core components yourself but also guide and mentor other engineers, influencing engineering direction, standards, and execution quality.
You will learn and shape the full AI stack: from GPU kernels and quantized execution paths to distributed serving, scheduling, and the APIs that power real-time AI applications. If you enjoy deep systems work, thrive on ownership, and want to lead engineers in building foundational AI infrastructure, this role puts you at the center of SciForium’s mission and growth.
What you'll do
- Lead the technical direction of the model serving platform, owning architecture decisions and guiding engineering execution.
- Build core serving components including execution runtimes, batching, scheduling, and distributed inference systems.
- Develop high-performance C++ and CUDA/HIP modules, including custom GPU kernels and memory-optimized runtimes.
- Collaborate with ML researchers to productionize new multimodal models and ensure low-latency, scalable inference.
- Build Python APIs and services that expose model capabilities to downstream applications.
- Mentor and support other engineers through code reviews, design discussions, and hands-on technical guidance.
- Drive performance profiling, benchmarking, and observability across the inference stack.
- Ensure high reliability and maintainability through testing, monitoring, and engineering best practices.
- Troubleshoot and resolve complex issues across GPU, runtime, and service layers.
Ideal candidate profile
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
- 5+ years of experience designing and building scalable, reliable backend systems or distributed infrastructure.
- Strong understanding of LLM inference mechanics (prefill vs decode, batching, KV cache)
- Experience with Kubernetes/Ray, Containerization
- Strong proficiency in C++, Python.
- Strong debugging, profiling, and performance optimization skills at the system level.
- Ability to collaborate closely with ML researchers and translate model or runtime requirements into production-grade systems.
- Effective communication skills and the ability to lead technical discussions, mentor engineers, and drive engineering quality.
- Comfortable working from the office and contributing to a fast-moving, high-ownership team culture.
Nice-to-have
- Experience with ML systems engineering, distributed GPU scheduling, open source inference engine like vLLM, Sglang, or TRT-LLM
- Experience in building large scale ML/MLOps infrastructure
- Proficiency in CUDA or ROCm and experience with GPU profiling tools
- Experience at an AI/ML startup, research lab, or Big Tech infrastructure/ML team.
- Familiarity with multimodal model architectures, raw-byte models, or efficient inference techniques.
- Contributions to open-source ML or HPC infrastructure
Benefits include
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance
- 401k plan
- Daily lunch, snacks, and beverages
- Flexible time off
- Competitive salary and equity
Sciforium's standard text
Equal opportunity
Sciforium is an equal opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without attention to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran or disability status.
What this role asks for
In most of Sciforium's ads
LLM · Machine Learning · Python
Named in most of its open postings, whatever the role.
94% of this description is written for the role. The rest is Sciforium's standard text, folded away below.
Read against Sciforium's other open postings on this site.
The team: Engineering HIRES STEADILY
This role is one of 12 open in Engineering. 3 were posted in the last 30 days and the oldest in November: a team that hires all year rather than one being built.
WHAT THE TEAM WORKS WITH, ACROSS ITS POSTINGS
Python (10 of 12), LLM (8 of 12), Machine Learning (8 of 12), CUDA (6 of 12), C++ (5 of 12), Kubernetes (5 of 12), PyTorch (5 of 12)
OTHER ROLES ON THIS TEAM
- GPU Kernel Engineer posted Oct 12
- Senior HPC & GPU Infrastructure Engineer posted Oct 6
- Foundation Model Data Engineer posted Sep 28
- Pre-training Research Engineer posted Aug 31
- Research Engineer - Model Evaluation & MLOps posted Aug 31
- Distributed Training and Inference Engineer posted Aug 24
- Software Engineer, Fullstack posted Aug 7
- GPU Cluster Engineer, Networking posted Aug 6
- GPU Cluster Engineer, Systems & Platform posted Aug 6
- GPU Cluster Engineer, Hardware Operations posted Jul 8
- Senior AI Serving Engineer, Backend posted Nov 15
From the team and dates on Sciforium's own job board.
See Software Engineer salaries in San Francisco →
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