As a Senior II Software Engineer Lead, you will be responsible for driving the design and implementation of critical components of our globally distributed AI inference platform. You’ll work hands-on to build and optimize systems that deliver OpenAI-compatible endpoints while orchestrating inference workloads across regions. You will guide other engineers, influence technical direction, and ensure delivery of high-quality, scalable solutions.

As a Senior II Software Engineer Lead, you will be responsible for:

• Leading the design and implementation of critical platform components for Akamai Inference Cloud, ensuring performance, scalability, and reliability
• Driving technical decisions for your domain, selecting appropriate tools, frameworks, and approaches for AI inference workloads
• Mentoring and guiding engineers on the team through code reviews, design discussions, and technical problem-solving
• Implementing and optimizing containerized AI workloads with hardware-specific optimizations and integrating inference frameworks at scale
• Collaborating across teams to define technical requirements, contribute to platform standards, and ensure operational excellence

• 8 years of relevant experience and a Bachelor’s degree or its equivalent
• Have solid proficiency in distributed systems, cloud services, and platform engineering
• Demonstrate hands-on experience with AI inference, model serving, or LLM deployment with working knowledge of inference frameworks (TensorRT, vLLM, TorchServe, Triton)
• Show expertise in containerization and orchestration technologies including Kubernetes, Docker, and cloud-native architectures
• Have proven experience building scalable, high-performance systems with modern DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code
• Demonstrate solid technical leadership through mentoring, code quality advocacy, and ability to drive technical solutions for complex problems
• Show familiarity with API design and development(REST/gRPC patterns), GPU infrastructure and hardware acceleration
• Have knowledge of observability, monitoring, and debugging distributed systems

AIC

Akamai is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. For US based candidates only - the base salary for this position ranges from $146,400 - $263,600/year; a candidate’s salary is determined by various factors including, but not limited to, relevant work experience, skills, certifications and location. Compensation for candidates outside the US will vary. The compensation package may also include incentive compensation opportunities in the form of annual bonus or incentives, equity awards and an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP). Akamai provides industry-leading benefits including healthcare, 401K savings plan, company holidays, vacation (in the form of PTO), sick time, family friendly benefits including parental leave and an employee assistance program including a focus on mental and financial wellness; Eligibility requirements apply.

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