Engineering Manager - Inference

In 2012, Lambda started with a crew of AI engineers publishing research at top machine-learning conferences. We began as an AI company built by AI engineers. That hasn't changed. Today, we're on a mission to be the world's top AI computing platform. We equip engineers with the tools to deploy AI that is fast, secure, affordable, and built to scale. Whether they need powerhouse GPU hardware on-site or the flexibility of cloud-based solutions, we've got the horsepower to make it happen. Lambda’s AI Cloud has been adopted by the world’s leading companies and research institutions including Anyscale, Rakuten, The AI Institute, and multiple enterprises with over a trillion dollars of market capitalization. Our goal is to make computation as effortless and ubiquitous as electricity.

If you'd like to build the world's best deep learning cloud, join us. 

*Note: This position requires presence in our San Francisco office location 4 days per week; Lambda’s designated work from home day is currently Tuesday.

What you’ll do

• Lead our Inference team, developing our rapidly growing inference-as-a-service product as it tackles new types of models, new serving modes, and an ever increasing customer base, across thousands to tens of thousands of GPUs.

• Be product-focused in your leadership and execution, always placing the needs of the customer first, with a particular focus on feature velocity, reliability and security.

• Balance development work for cutting-edge features and models against reducing operational overhead and scaling costs.

• Proactively engage with other teams who run the lower-level infrastructure, datacenter builds, and frontends and work to develop a holistic product and engineering plan.

• Hire, grow and retain top-tier engineers, in the fields of both distributed systems engineering and machine learning.

• Shape a culture of sustainable, empathetic, and high-velocity engineering, with a deep focus on cross-team collaboration, documentation, and data-driven decision-making.

You

• 6+ years in a  full-time management role at a high-growth technology company 

• 10+ years of industry experience in software engineering, with a focus on large-scale distributed systems and backend systems.

• Proven record of leading and building engineering teams that work on mission-critical, high performance systems.

• Exceptional leadership skills that encompass leading by trust, building empathy with your reports and other teams, and maintaining a sustainable but rapid velocity.

• customer-facing skills, including pre-sales, general support, and incident management.

• At least one year of experience running inference for machine learning models

• Knowledge of the machine learning model lifecycle and experience with each of its steps (including pre-training, fine-tuning, and inference)

• Demonstrated expertise in managing long-term projects alongside urgent, short-term priorities and incident resolution.

• Extensive experience collaborating with product, sales, and other engineering teams to build cohesive products with a focus on user experience and reliability.

• Ability to understand, review and structure Python and Go applications.

Nice to Have

• Significant experience running machine learning workloads on GPUs at large scale

• Academic or scientific experience working with machine learning

• Direct experience working with vLLM, sglang, PyTorch, or other ML libraries

• Experience managing a remote, distributed team

• Strong experience in Python and/or Go

• Significant sales, customer service or support experience

Salary Range Information 

Based on market data and other factors, the annual salary range for this position is $300,000-$400,000. However, a salary higher or lower than this range may be appropriate for a candidate whose qualifications differ meaningfully from those listed in the job description. 

About Lambda

• Founded in 2012, ~350 employees (2024) and growing fast

• We offer generous cash & equity compensation

• Our investors include Andra Capital, SGW, Andrej Karpathy, ARK Invest, Fincadia Advisors, G Squared, In-Q-Tel (IQT), KHK & Partners, NVIDIA, Pegatron, Supermicro, Wistron, Wiwynn, US Innovative Technology, Gradient Ventures, Mercato Partners, SVB, 1517, Crescent Cove.

• We are experiencing extremely high demand for our systems, with quarter over quarter, year over year profitability

• Our research papers have been accepted into top machine learning and graphics conferences, including NeurIPS, ICCV, SIGGRAPH, and TOG

• Health, dental, and vision coverage for you and your dependents

• Commuter/Work from home stipends for select roles

• 401k Plan with 2% company match (USA employees)

• Flexible Paid Time Off Plan that we all actually use

A Final Note:

You do not need to match all of the listed expectations to apply for this position. We are committed to building a team with a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and skills.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Lambda is an Equal Opportunity employer. Applicants are considered without regard to race, color, religion, creed, national origin, age, sex, gender, marital status, sexual orientation and identity, genetic information, veteran status, citizenship, or any other factors prohibited by local, state, or federal law.