Engineering Manager, Baseten
Runtime Fabric
$165-330k
+ Equity
ML application builder for data scientists
Be an early applicant
ML application builder for data scientists
101-200 employees
Be an early applicant
$165-330k
+ Equity
101-200 employees
Company mission
To make machine learning accessible to every organisation.
Role
Who you are
- Proven experience managing and growing engineering teams in a systems, infrastructure, or low-level runtime context
- Deep familiarity with the Linux container ecosystem: containerd, runc, OCI Runtime Spec, Linux namespaces, and cgroups, with the ability to engage credibly in code reviews and architectural discussions
- Contributions to containerd/containerd, opencontainers/runc, google/gvisor, kata-containers/kata-containers, or closely related open-source projects
- Strong systems programming background in Go and/or C/C++
- Experience with distributed storage systems, content-addressable storage, or large-scale caching infrastructure
- Understanding of how container images are structured, stored, and delivered at scale
- Strong written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence without authority across teams
- Apply now to embark on a rewarding journey in shaping the future of AI! If you are a motivated individual with a passion for machine learning and a desire to be part of a collaborative and forward-thinking team, we would love to hear from you
Desirable
- Experience with GPU device access in containers: NVIDIA Container Toolkit, CDI (Container Device Interface), or GPU-aware scheduling
- Familiarity with lazy-loading snapshotters (stargz, soci, EROFS/Nydus) or peer-to-peer image distribution
- Experience with secure container runtimes (gVisor, Sysbox) or micro-VM technologies (Firecracker, Cloud Hypervisor)
- Understanding of containerd's shim API (v2) and experience building custom shim implementations
- Background in multi-tenant infrastructure or security-sensitive serving environments
What the job involves
- As Engineering Manager of the Runtime Fabrics team, you will lead this work, setting technical direction, growing a world-class team of systems engineers, and ensuring the team's output shapes not just Baseten's infrastructure but the open-source container ecosystem at large
- If you've contributed to containerd, runc, or related OCI projects and are ready to lead a team solving some of the hardest problems in infrastructure today, we'd love to talk
- Recruit, hire, and develop a high-performing team of systems engineers with deep container and Linux expertise
- Foster a culture of technical rigor, open-source contribution, and continuous improvement
- Provide regular coaching, feedback, and career development support to your direct reports
- Partner with engineering leadership to define the long-term vision and roadmap for container runtime and storage infrastructure
- Guide the team in extending and hardening containerd, runc, and related OCI ecosystem projects to meet the GPU-specific requirements of production AI inference, including startup performance, GPU device access, and multi-tenant isolation
- Oversee the architecture and evolution of the Baseten Delivery Network: the tiered caching and weight delivery system that makes cold starts 2–3x faster and eliminates thundering herd failures during burst scaling events
- Drive the expansion of BDN's architecture, currently focused on model weights, to container images, training checkpoints, and deployment artifacts
- Provide technical oversight on GPU-aware isolation mechanisms for multi-tenant inference, including secure container runtimes, Linux namespace hardening, and longer-term micro-VM integration
- Ensure the team maintains end-to-end ownership of the container startup performance path, from snapshotter initialization through weight delivery to first inference request
- Champion the team's contributions back to the open-source containerd ecosystem alongside a team of core maintainers
- Act as the primary advocate for Runtime Fabrics across the organization, ensuring upstream and downstream teams have the integration support they need
- Collaborate with product and engineering stakeholders to prioritize investments based on business impact and infrastructure reliability
- Communicate team progress, technical trade-offs, and architectural decisions clearly to leadership
Our take
As with its mathematical namesake, Baseten focuses on simplifying the complex. The San Francisco startup focuses on simplifying the integration of artificial intelligence into businesses. The tools that Baseten build demolish the need for businesses to hire specialised engineers, utilising the huge strides in artificial intelligence that we’ve seen in the last few years, all without adding workload to businesses.
With serious funding behind it, Baseten has grown its team by three times year-over-year over the last five years. Specifically, it's hired across engineering and marketing, gaining talent from companies such as GitHub, Google, Uber, Amazon, and Palantir. Part of Baseten's focus is on helping companies implement the tools that they have at their disposal, a long-overlooked aspect of machine learning that many businesses have been eager to champion, but are uncertain about how to actually use.
Simplifying the complex world of artificial intelligence for business is no mean feat, but with hundreds of millions in funding behind it and a $5 billion valuation reported in 2026, the company is well on its way to market domination. What's more, the three founders, who met whilst working as engineers at Gumroad, have a lot of experience in navigating this gap in the market.
Kirsty
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (last 2 of 6 rounds)
Jan 2026
$300m
LATE VC
Sep 2025
$150m
SERIES D
Total funding: $585m
Company benefits
- Remote-first work environment. The Baseten team is welcome to work from wherever they want; fully remote, in our San Francisco office, or a mix of both. Today, our team (including our founding team) is spread across the United States, Canada, and Armenia. We provide a $1,000 stipend for you to make your home-office comfortable and productive
- Regular in-person team summits. We get together as a team three times a year to plan, workshop, and most importantly, get to know each other better
- Unlimited PTO. We ask that everyone take at least 4 weeks of vacation. And we have a company-wide break between Christmas and New Year's Day
- Full healthcare coverage. Medical, dental and vision insurance for you and your family
- Paid parental leave. 16-weeks fully paid parental leave (adoptive and non-birth parents included) and flexibility with schedules while returning to work
- Company-sponsored 401(k) for you to contribute to
- Learning and development budget. We encourage you to take classes, attend conferences, and invest in your craft and we’ll cover expenses to make it happen
Company HQ
Union Square, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Tuhin Srivastava
(Co-Founder)Previously Co-Founder at Shape, Machine Learning at Gumroad and Skulpt.
Amir Haghighat
(Co-Founder)Previously Head of Engineering at Gumroad, Software Engineer at Yelp and Engineering Manager at Clover Health.
Phillip Howes
(Co-Founder)Previously Co-Founder at Shape, Machine Learning Engineer at Gumroad and Research Assistant at the University of Sydney.
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