The Software Engineer, Infrastructure role involves building tools for large-scale compute, debugging distributed systems, and improving software infrastructure for research teams.
Summary
At Imbue, we leverage large amounts of compute to make our small research team more effective. This role is about enabling and supporting those large-scale compute efforts and all of the other software infrastructure that goes into making research a pleasant, seamless experience for the rest of the team, especially as we scale to increasingly higher scale systems.
Example projects
• Build and manage wrapper tools that allow code written for single hosts to scale seamlessly to large GPU clusters.
• Debug distributed exceptions and improve our logging and tracing stack.
• Design improvements to systems that manage secrets, configurations, ongoing jobs, and other stateful components of our software.
• Search out and prototype possible additions to our software stack that can integrate and provide extra leverage to pain points in typical workflows.
• Dig deeply into open-source or third-party code, including C/C++ libraries, to add debugging information or patch in performance improvements.
• Work collaboratively with other members of the team to debug, provide guidance, and design software that is resilient to hardware and networking failures as well as third party tooling issues.
• In summary: make good abstractions so that other engineers on the team can work at a higher level and everything else works seamlessly.
You are
• A good software engineer. We are strong adherents of "infrastructure as code", so you will be writing (and reading) lots of Python, bash, etc.
• Passionate about enabling other engineers and creating good tooling for developers to interact with infrastructure in an automated way.
• Experienced enough with dev ops to be properly opinionated. You should understand the trade-offs of various approaches and technologies, and not be dogmatically tied to a single tool.
• Careful and detail oriented. We do science and care deeply about the correctness of the results. Our infrastructure reflects this--we highly value robustness and ensuring that systems run reliably and correctly.
Compensation and Benefits
• Work directly on creating software with human-like intelligence.
• Generous compensation, equity, and benefits.
• $20K+ yearly budget for self-improvement: coaching, courses, conferences, etc.
• Actively co-create and participate in a positive, intentional team culture.
• Spend time learning, reading papers, and deeply understanding prior work.
• Frequent team events, dinners, off-sites, and hanging out.
• Compensation packages are highly variable based on a variety of factors. If your salary requirements fall outside of the stated range, we still encourage you to apply. The range for this role is $170,000–$350,000 cash, $10,000–$2,000,000 in equity.
How to apply
All submissions are reviewed by a person, so we encourage you to include notes on why you're interested in working with us. If you have any other work that you can showcase (open source code, side projects, etc.), certainly include it! We know that talent comes from many backgrounds, and we aim to build a team with diverse skillsets that spike strongly in different areas.
We try to reply either way within a week or two at most (usually much sooner).
Learn more about our full interview process here.
About us
Imbue builds AI systems that reason and code, enabling AI agents to accomplish larger goals and safely work in the real world. We train our own foundation models optimized for reasoning and prototype agents on top of these models. By using these agents extensively, we gain insights into improving both the capabilities of the underlying models and the interaction design for agents.
We aim to rekindle the dream of the *personal* computer, where computers become truly intelligent tools that empower us, giving us freedom, dignity, and agency to pursue the things we love.
Top Skills
Bash
Python
Similar Jobs
Artificial Intelligence • Cloud • Hardware • Machine Learning • Other • Software • Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Design and implement systems for infrastructure management, automate tooling, and drive new infrastructure rollouts while collaborating with cross-functional teams.
Top Skills:
ContainerizationHpc InfrastructureLinuxOrchestrationPython
Artificial Intelligence • Cloud • Consumer Web • Productivity • Software • App development • Data Privacy
The Senior Infrastructure Software Engineer will develop large-scale distributed build systems, optimize build infrastructure for productivity, and mentor junior engineers.
Top Skills:
BazelC/C++GoJavaPython
Artificial Intelligence • Blockchain • Fintech • Financial Services • Cryptocurrency • NFT • Web3
The Senior Software Engineer will enhance system reliability, manage projects for scalability, develop automation tools, and mentor engineering teams.
Top Skills:
AWSAzureDockerEc2GCPGoKubernetesRubyTerraform
What you need to know about the Boston Tech Scene
Boston is a powerhouse for technology innovation thanks to world-class research universities like MIT and Harvard and a robust pipeline of venture capital investment. Host to the first telephone call and one of the first general-purpose computers ever put into use, Boston is now a hub for biotechnology, robotics and artificial intelligence — though it’s also home to several B2B software giants. So it’s no surprise that the city consistently ranks among the greatest startup ecosystems in the world.
Key Facts About Boston Tech
- Number of Tech Workers: 269,000; 9.4% of overall workforce (2024 CompTIA survey)
- Major Tech Employers: Thermo Fisher Scientific, Toast, Klaviyo, HubSpot, DraftKings
- Key Industries: Artificial intelligence, biotechnology, robotics, software, aerospace
- Funding Landscape: $15.7 billion in venture capital funding in 2024 (Pitchbook)
- Notable Investors: Summit Partners, Volition Capital, Bain Capital Ventures, MassVentures, Highland Capital Partners
- Research Centers and Universities: MIT, Harvard University, Boston College, Tufts University, Boston University, Northeastern University, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, National Bureau of Economic Research, Broad Institute, Lowell Center for Space Science & Technology, National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories
