Job description

ABOUT US: Fireworks is the platform for specialized intelligence, enabling companies to build, train, and serve AI models tailored to their own data, workflows, and products. Founded by the team behind PyTorch and backed by AMD, Atreides, Benchmark Capital, Index Ventures, Lightspeed, NVIDIA, Sequoia Capital, and TCV, Fireworks powers production AI with hundreds of state-of-the-art open models across text, image, embedding, audio, and multimodal workloads. Today, Fireworks is a Series D company valued at $17.5 billion, bringing together an ambitious, collaborative team that's building the future of enterprise AI. THE ROLE: As a Software Engineer on our Cloud Infrastructure team, you'll be at the forefront, architecting and building the foundational systems that power Fireworks AI's revolutionary generative AI platform. You'll spearhead the creation of one of the world's first virtual clouds, seamlessly serving AI workloads across the globe and every cloud provider. Your mission: to deliver unparalleled reliability, efficiency, and scalability, fueling the world's most innovative AI products.This is a highly technical role requiring deep expertise in distributed systems, cloud-native infrastructure, and machine learning platforms. You’ll partner closely with engineering partners, product teams, and infrastructure stakeholders to design solutions that balance performance, cost-efficiency, and operational simplicity across compute, storage, and networking layers. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES: - Architect and build scalable, resilient, and high-performance backend infrastructure to support distributed training, inference, and data processing pipelines. - Lead technical design discussions, mentor other engineers, and establish best practices for building and operating large-scale ML infrastructure. - Design and implement core backend services (e.g., job schedulers, resource managers, autoscalers, model serving layers) with a focus on efficiency and low latency. - Drive infrastructure optimization initiatives, including compute cost reduction, storage lifecycle management, and network performance tuning. - Collaborate cross-functionally with ML, DevOps, and product teams to translate research and product needs into robust infrastructure solutions. - Continuously evaluate and integrate cloud-native and open-source technologies (e.g., Kubernetes, Kubeflow, MLFlow) to enhance our platform’s capabilities and reliability. - Own end-to-end systems from design to deployment and observability, with a strong emphasis on reliability, fault tolerance, and operational excellence. - Ensuring System Reliability: Ensure systems are designed and implemented with high availability, scalability, and performance. Focus on fault tolerance, disaster recovery, identifying and removing scaling bottlenecks, and performance optimization across our multi-cloud infrastructure. - Observability & Monitoring: Develop, implement, and maintain comprehensive monitoring, alerting, logging, and tracing solutions to provide deep insights into system health and performance MINIMUM QUALIFICATIONS: - Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience). - 5+ years of experience designing and building backend infrastructure in cloud environments (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure). - Proven experience in ML infrastructure and tooling (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, Vertex AI, SageMaker, Kubernetes, etc.). - Strong software development skills in languages like Python, or C++. - Deep understanding of distributed systems fundamentals: scheduling, orchestration, storage, networking, and compute optimization. PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: - Master’s or PhD in Computer Science or related field. - Experience leading infrastructure projects supporting large-scale ML/AI workloads or high-throughput systems. - Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD tooling (e.g., Terraform, ArgoCD, GitOps). - Track record of driving system performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency improvements. - Contributions to open-source cloud or ML infrastructure projects a plus. WHY FIREWORKS? - Solve Hard Problems: Tackle challenges at the forefront of AI infrastructure, from low-latency inference to scalable model serving. - Build What’s Next: Work with bleeding-edge technology that impacts how businesses and developers harness AI globally. - Ownership & Impact: Join a fast-growing, passionate team where your work directly shapes the future of AI—no bureaucracy, just results. - Learn from the Best: Collaborate with world-class engineers and AI researchers who thrive on curiosity and innovation. Fireworks AI is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all innovators.

Requirements

Must-haves

Architect and build scalable, resilient, and high-performance backend infrastructure to support distributed training, inference, and data processing pipelines.
Lead technical design discussions, mentor other engineers, and establish best practices for building and operating large-scale ML infrastructure.
Design and implement core backend services (e.g., job schedulers, resource managers, autoscalers, model serving layers) with a focus on efficiency and low latency.
Drive infrastructure optimization initiatives, including compute cost reduction, storage lifecycle management, and network performance tuning.
Collaborate cross-functionally with ML, DevOps, and product teams to translate research and product needs into robust infrastructure solutions.
Continuously evaluate and integrate cloud-native and open-source technologies (e.g., Kubernetes, Kubeflow, MLFlow) to enhance our platform’s capabilities and reliability.
Own end-to-end systems from design to deployment and observability, with a strong emphasis on reliability, fault tolerance, and operational excellence.
Observability & Monitoring: Develop, implement, and maintain comprehensive monitoring, alerting, logging, and tracing solutions to provide deep insights into system health and performance
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field (or equivalent practical experience).
5+ years of experience designing and building backend infrastructure in cloud environments (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure).
Proven experience in ML infrastructure and tooling (e.g., PyTorch, TensorFlow, Vertex AI, SageMaker, Kubernetes, etc.).
Strong software development skills in languages like Python, or C++.
Deep understanding of distributed systems fundamentals: scheduling, orchestration, storage, networking, and compute optimization.

Nice-to-haves

Master’s or PhD in Computer Science or related field.
Experience leading infrastructure projects supporting large-scale ML/AI workloads or high-throughput systems.
Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD tooling (e.g., Terraform, ArgoCD, GitOps).
Track record of driving system performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency improvements.
Contributions to open-source cloud or ML infrastructure projects a plus.
WHY FIREWORKS?
Solve Hard Problems: Tackle challenges at the forefront of AI infrastructure, from low-latency inference to scalable model serving.
Build What’s Next: Work with bleeding-edge technology that impacts how businesses and developers harness AI globally.
Ownership & Impact: Join a fast-growing, passionate team where your work directly shapes the future of AI—no bureaucracy, just results.
Learn from the Best: Collaborate with world-class engineers and AI researchers who thrive on curiosity and innovation.
Fireworks AI is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate diversity and are committed to creating an inclusive environment for all innovators.

Application prep

Use the role’s language and application details while tailoring your materials.

Keywords to mirror

aimachine learningmlkubernetesawsgcpazurepythonci/cd

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