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Agent guide: [/agents.md](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/agents.md). --- # Staff Software Engineer, Backend Infrastructure - **Company:** Sesame AI - **Location:** San Francisco, CA, United States - **Experience:** Expert - **Salary:** $175,000.0 - $280,000.0 - **Contract:** Permanent contract - **Skills:** Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), Audio Signal Processing, Information Engineering, Data Infrastructure, Database Design, Programming Tools, Machine Learning, Query Optimization, Reliability Engineering, Software Engineering, WebRTC, Pulumi, Backend, Cloudformation, Kubernetes, Low Latency, Machine Learning Operations, Terraform - **Published:** July 12, 2026 - **Apply:** https://www.indeed.com/viewjob?jk=72316aaf5099fb48 ## About the Role * A strong systems thinker who is equally comfortable leading technical direction and getting hands-on with implementation * 7+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time in infrastructure, platform, or ML systems roles * Hands-on reliability engineering experience - you have well-formed convictions about observability, monitoring, deployment systems, and loosely coupled architectures, and you've put them into practice at scale * Proven track record of building and shipping services at scale, with all the operational complexity that comes with it * Kubernetes - significant production experience building, operating, and scaling Kubernetes clusters * Experience designing and shipping flexible domain models and APIs - you think carefully about boundaries, contracts, and long-term maintainability * A default toward automation - you've consistently built efficiency gains through automation and have the track record to show it * Strong communication skills - you can lead your own direction, write clearly about tradeoffs, and bring engineers and stakeholders along with you, We'd love to hear about experience in any of these areas - we don't expect any one person to have all of them: * Infrastructure as Code at scale - significant IaC experience, preferably Terraform; CloudFormation, Pulumi, or Kubernetes-based approaches also welcome. Ideally you've led, architected, or contributed to a multi-stack, self-serve IaC system and understand the challenges of building infra that teams can own independently * ML infrastructure - any combination of the following: + PyTorch experience, especially model optimisation for serving + ML training or serving experience in general + Experience building ML serving and/or training infrastructure (TorchServe, Seldon, KServe, Ray Serve, or similar) + Experience building and leading large-scale distributed training and serving systems * Data engineering - pipeline design, dataset management, or data platform experience * Database design - complex schema design, query optimisation, and hard data modelling decisions across relational and non-relational stores * Real-time communication systems - low-latency audio, video, or streaming infrastructure ## Description * Design, build, and maintain secure, maintainable, self-serve core infrastructure that engineering teams can rely on and operate independently * Lead the architecture and evolution of a modern ML training infrastructure - scalable, reproducible, and built for rapid experimentation * Build and operate a modern model serving architecture with a focus on reliability, cost efficiency, and low latency * Lead and own the low-latency voice interface and audio processing pipeline - a technically demanding, performance-sensitive system at the core of Sesame's product * Build developer tooling, server infrastructure, and data infrastructure that is high leverage and low maintenance - the kind that makes other engineers faster without creating new dependencies on you * Lead technical direction within your domain, bring others along through clear communication and well-reasoned proposals, and raise the engineering bar across the team ## Related Videos - [Shipping Faster with Less: Render on Cloud Hosting, AI Workloads, and the Future of DevOps](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1894-shipping-faster-with-less-render-on-cloud-hosting-ai-workloads-and-the-future-of-devops) - [Why segmenting your infrastructure into tiers makes your infrastructure design better](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1960-why-segmenting-your-infrastructure-into-tiers-makes-your-infrastructure-design-better) - [Transforming Education: A Journey from interactive Markdown to Remote-Labs](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/941-transforming-education-a-journey-from-interactive-markdown-to-remote-labs) - [Developing the Backend with Stefan Lingler, CTO at Shpock](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/100360-developing-the-backend-with-stefan-lingler-cto-at-shpock) - [Unleashing Potential Across Teams: The Power of Infrastructure as Code](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/930-unleashing-potential-across-teams-the-power-of-infrastructure-as-code) - [Hello JARVIS - Building Voice Interfaces for Your LLMS](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/videos/1641-hello-jarvis-building-voice-interfaces-for-your-llms) ## Related Articles - [Highest Paying Tech Companies for Developers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/220-highest-paying-tech-companies-for-developers) - [Dev Digest 120 - Apple and peers](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/455-dev-digest-120-apple-and-peers) - [Is Software Engineering Over-Saturated?](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/418-is-software-engineering-over-saturated) - [Dev Digest 121 - AI goes offline](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/456-dev-digest-121-ai-goes-offline) - [Dev Digest 137 - AI'm not sure about this](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/485-dev-digest-137-ai-m-not-sure-about-this) - [How to Become an AI Engineer](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/magazine/331-how-to-become-an-ai-engineer)