Engineering Manager, Forward Deployed Engineering (LLM)

Baseten powers mission-critical inference for AI companies like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma, and Writer. They unite applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and developer tooling to bring cutting-edge models into production. Recently raised a $1.5B Series F led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital.

As an Engineering Manager (Player & Coach), you will lead and mentor a team of Forward Deployed Engineers focused on building, scaling, and optimizing LLM inference workloads for Baseten customers. You will guide your team through designing, deploying, and managing high-performance, low-latency AI applications on Baseten's platform. FDE at Baseten is not a sales function; it's a mix of engineering, product, and customer architects who contribute to the core codebase, drive feature roadmap, and execute on customer engagements. You will partner with product, infrastructure, and customer engineering teams to ensure LLMs and generative AI systems deliver performance, reliability, and cost efficiency in production.

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of Forward Deployed Engineers, providing guidance on technical direction, project execution, and professional development.
• Set clear goals and ensure timely, high-quality delivery across customer-facing projects involving LLM deployment and inference optimization.
• Collaborate with leadership to align team priorities with company and customer goals.
• Act as a player-coach: lead the team while also driving strategic product initiatives and customer engagements.
• Develop and maintain software systems using general-purpose programming languages, with a preference for Python.
• Drive customer impact by designing, implementing, and deploying Baseten solutions end-to-end (problem framing → evaluation → production deployment → monitoring).
• Deliver with velocity: turn vague objectives into clear specs and well-defined PoCs.
• Optimize and enhance AI/ML projects, contributing to continuous improvement of the technical stack.
• Own products and customer projects end-to-end, functioning as engineer, project manager, and product manager.

• Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.
• 4+ years of professional software engineering experience, including 1+ year in a leadership or mentorship capacity.
• Strong programming skills in Python, with production experience in building or optimizing ML inference systems.
• Proven experience with LLMs, inference optimization, or serving frameworks (e.g., vLLM, TensorRT, Triton, Hugging Face, Ray Serve).
• Familiarity with observability, profiling, and cost/performance tradeoffs in production ML systems.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills.

• Experience leading customer-facing engineering teams or working directly with enterprise partners.
• Deep understanding of GPU infrastructure, distributed inference, or model compression techniques.

• 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 (offices closed from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day)
• Paid parental leave
• Fertility and family-building stipend through Carrot
• Company-facilitated 401(k)
• Exposure to a variety of ML startups