Senior Software Engineer I, Inference
At a glance
Senior Software Engineering role at CoreWeave. Sunnyvale · $139,000–$204,000 base.
techroles summary, based on the employer's posting.
What you'll do
- Shape architecture for inference services, lead design reviews and break cross-service projects into manageable milestones
- Set service reliability measures and follow through on incident fixes, using each release to improve performance
- Tune inference with scheduling, decoding and cache-reuse techniques, then measure their effect
- Plan capacity and autoscaling, and prepare fallback, rollback and traffic-shifting approaches for incidents
- Coach early-career engineers and raise design, code and testing quality across teams
What you bring
- You have roughly three to five years of distributed-systems or cloud-services work for IC3, or five to eight for IC4
- You bring strong Python or Go skills, knowledge of networked systems and performance, plus production Kubernetes, CI/CD and observability experience
- You understand inference techniques such as batching, caching, mixed precision and streaming token delivery
- You have improved tail latency and service reliability using metrics, and hold a relevant degree or equivalent practical experience
Who this fits
This suits an experienced individual contributor who can own technical direction and mentor less experienced engineers. The role is based in Sunnyvale and requires eligibility to access export-controlled information, either directly or through the applicable authorization process.
From the employer
What You’ll Do:
Senior engineers are area owners who lead designs, raise engineering standards, and deliver measurable improvements to latency, throughput, and reliability across multiple services. You’ll partner with product, orchestration, and hardware teams to evolve our Kubernetes-native inference platform and meet strict P99 SLAs at scale.
About the role:
- Lead design reviews and drive architecture within the team; decompose multi-service work into clear milestones.
- Define and own SLIs/SLOs; ensure post-incident actions land and reliability improves release-over-release.
- Implement advanced optimizations (e.g., micro-batch schedulers, speculative decoding, KV-cache reuse) and quantify impact.
- Strengthen incident posture: capacity planning, autoscaling policy, graceful degradation, rollback/traffic-shift strategies.
- Mentor IC1/IC2 engineers; review cross-team designs and elevate coding/testing standards.
- For IC4: own an area spanning multiple services and teams (e.g., request routing & adaptive scheduling, cost-per-token analytics, GPU resource isolation).
Who You Are:
- IC3: ~3–5 years; IC4: ~5–8 years industry experience building distributed systems or cloud services.
- Computer Science or
- Strong coding in Python or Go (C++ a plus) and deep familiarity with networked systems and performance.
- Hands-on experience with Kubernetes at production scale, CI/CD, and observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry).
- Practical knowledge of inference internals: batching, caching, mixed precision (BF16/FP8), streaming token delivery.
- Proven track record improving tail latency (P95/P99) and service reliability through metrics-driven work.
- Bachelor’s or Master’s in CS, EE, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).
Preferred:
- Contributions to inference frameworks (vLLM, Triton, TensorRT-LLM, Ray Serve, TorchServe).
- Experience with CUDA kernels, NCCL/SHARP, RDMA/NUMA, or GPU interconnect topologies.
- Leading multi-team initiatives or partnering with customers on mission-critical launches.
Wondering if you’re a good fit? We believe in investing in our people and value candidates who can bring their diverse experiences to our teams – even if you aren't a 100% skill or experience match.
Why CoreWeave?
At CoreWeave, we work hard, have fun, and move fast! We’re in an exciting stage of hyper-growth that you will not want to miss out on. We’re not afraid of a little chaos, and we’re constantly learning. Our team cares deeply about how we build our product and how we work together, which is represented through our core values:
- Be Curious at Your Core
- Act Like an Owner
- Empower Employees
- Deliver Best-in-Class Client Experiences
- Achieve More Together
We support and encourage an entrepreneurial outlook and independent thinking. We foster an environment that encourages collaboration and provides the opportunity to develop innovative solutions to complex problems. As we get set for takeoff, the growth opportunities within the organization are constantly expanding. You will be surrounded by some of the best talent in the industry, who will want to learn from you, too. Come join us!
The base salary range for this role is $139,000 to $204,000. The starting salary will be determined based on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and market location. We strive for both market alignment and internal equity when determining compensation. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package includes a discretionary bonus, equity awards, and a comprehensive benefits program (all based on eligibility).
What We Offer
The range we’ve posted represents the typical compensation range for this role. To determine actual compensation, we review the market rate for each candidate which can include a variety of factors. These include qualifications, experience, interview performance, and location.
In addition to a competitive salary, we offer a variety of benefits to support your needs. The benefits below reflect our US-based offerings for full-time employees; for roles in other locations, benefits vary and are shared during the hiring process. These include:
- Medical, dental, and vision insurance - 100% paid for by CoreWeave
- Company-paid Life Insurance
- Voluntary supplemental life insurance
- Short and long-term disability insurance
- Flexible Spending Account
- Health Savings Account
- Tuition Reimbursement
- Ability to Participate in Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)
- Mental Wellness Benefits through Spring Health
- Family-Forming support provided by Carrot
- Paid Parental Leave
- Flexible, full-service childcare support with Kinside
- 401(k) with a generous employer match
- Flexible PTO
- Catered lunch each day in our office and data center locations
- A casual work environment
- A work culture focused on innovative disruption
California Applicants
California Consumer Privacy Act
Equal Opportunity & Accommodations
CoreWeave is an equal opportunity employer, committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive workplace. All qualified applicants and candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, or genetic information.
As part of this commitment and consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), CoreWeave will ensure that qualified applicants and candidates with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations for the hiring process, unless such accommodation would cause an undue hardship. If reasonable accommodation is needed, please contact: careers@coreweave.com.
Export Control Compliance
This position requires access to export controlled information. To conform to U.S. Government export regulations applicable to that information, applicant must either be (A) a U.S. person, defined as a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful permanent resident (green card holder), (iii) refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, (B) eligible to access the export controlled information without a required export authorization, or (C) eligible and reasonably likely to obtain the required export authorization from the applicable U.S. government agency. CoreWeave may, for legitimate business reasons, decline to pursue any export licensing process.
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