Principal Engineer, Inference Service

We’re seeking an experienced Principal Software Engineer to drive the design, development and scaling of our Large Language Model (LLM) inference services. As a Principal Software Engineer at DigitalOcean, you will join a dynamic team dedicated to revolutionizing cloud computing and AI. This team will be building a new product that will bring our famed DigitalOcean Simplicity to the world of LLM hosting, serving, and optimization. In this role, you will build systems for inference serving of popular open source / open weights LLMs as well as custom models, develop novel techniques for optimizing these models and scale the platform to handle millions of users across the globe. 

• Design and implement an inference platform for serving large language models optimized for the various GPU platforms they will be run on.
• Develop and shepherd complex AI and cloud engineering projects through the entire product development lifecycle (PDLC) - ideation, product definition, experimentation, prototyping, development, testing, release, and operations.
• Optimize runtime and infrastructure layers of the inference stack for best model performance.
• Build native cross platform inference support across NVIDIA and AMD GPUs for a variety of model architectures.
• Contribute to open source inference engines to make them perform better on DigitalOcean cloud.
• Build tooling and observability to monitor system health, and build auto tuning capabilities.
• Build benchmarking frameworks to test model serving performance to guide system and infrastructure tuning efforts.
• Mentor engineers on inference systems, GPU infrastructure, and distributed systems best practices.

• 10+ years of experience in software engineering, which should include 2+ years building AI/ML technologies (ideally related to LLM hosting and inference).
• Enduring interest in distributed systems design, AI/ML, and implementation at scale in the cloud.
• Deep expertise in cloud computing platforms and modern AI/ML technologies.
• Experience with modern LLMs, ideally related to hosting, serving, and optimizing such models. 
• Experience with one or more inference engines would be a bonus: vLLM, SGLang, Modular Max etc.
• Experience researching, evaluating, and building with open source technologies.
• Proficiency in programming languages commonly used in cloud development, such as Python and Go.
• Experience with various GPU platforms from AMD and NVIDIA and associated toolsets for tuning, configuring, and accelerating workloads on them would be ideal, but not required (e.g., CUDA and ROCm).
• A strong sense of ownership and a drive to figure out and resolve any issues preventing you and your team from delivering value to your customers
• An appreciation for process and developing cross-disciplinary collaboration between engineering, operations, support, and product groups
• Familiarity with end-to-end quality best practices and their implementation
• Experience coordinating with partner teams across time zones and geographies
• Experience with infrastructure as code (IaC) tools like Terraform or Ansible
• A passion for coaching and mentoring junior software engineers

• We innovate with purpose. You’ll be a part of a cutting-edge technology company with an upward trajectory, who are proud to simplify cloud and AI so builders can spend more time creating software that changes the world. As a member of the team, you will be a Shark who thinks big, bold, and scrappy, like an owner with a bias for action and a powerful sense of responsibility for customers, products, employees, and decisions. 
• We prioritize career development. At DO, you’ll do the best work of your career. You will work with some of the smartest and most interesting people in the industry. We are a high-performance organization that will always challenge you to think big. Our organizational development team will provide you with resources to ensure you keep growing. We provide employees with reimbursement for relevant conferences, training, and education. All employees have access to LinkedIn Learning's 10,000+ courses to support their continued growth and development.
• We care about your well-being. Regardless of your location, we will provide you with a competitive array of benefits to support you from our Employee Assistance Program to Local Employee Meetups to flexible time off policy, to name a few. While the philosophy around our benefits is the same worldwide, specific benefits may vary based on local regulations and preferences.
• We reward our employees. The salary range for this position is between $206,000 - $250,000 based on market data, relevant years of experience, and skills. You may qualify for a bonus in addition to base salary; bonus amounts are determined based on company and individual performance. We also provide equity compensation to eligible employees, including equity grants upon hire and the option to participate in our Employee Stock Purchase Program. 
• We value diversity and inclusion. We are an equal-opportunity employer, and recognize that diversity of thought and background builds stronger teams and products to serve our customers. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.

*This is a remote role

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