SWE - Backend Infrastructure Engineer

Overview

• ****About Sesame****
• Sesame believes in a future where computers are lifelike - with the ability to see, hear, and collaborate with us in ways that feel natural and human.
• With this vision, we're designing a new kind of computer, focused on making voice agents part of our daily lives.
• Our team brings together founders from Oculus and Ubiquity6, alongside proven leaders from Meta, Google, and Apple, with deep expertise spanning hardware and software.
• Join us in shaping a future where computers truly come alive.
• ****Responsibilities****
• Design and build secure, maintainable, self-serve core infrastructure that engineering teams can rely on and operate independently
• Architect and evolve 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
• Own and scale 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
• Set technical direction within your domain, bring others along through clear communication and well-reasoned proposals, and raise the engineering bar across the team
• ****Required Qualifications****
• A strong systems thinker who is equally comfortable setting direction and getting hands-on with implementation
• 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 shipping services at scale, with all the operational complexity that comes with it
• Kubernetes — significant production experience 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 delivered efficiency gains through automation and have the track record to show it
• Strong communication skills — you can set your own direction, write clearly about tradeoffs, and bring engineers and stakeholders along with you
• 3+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time in infrastructure, platform, or ML systems roles
• ****Preferred Qualifications****
• *We'd love to hear about experience in most 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 architected, maintained, 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 optimization 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 large-scale distributed training and serving systems
• Data engineering — pipeline design, dataset management, or data platform experience
• Database design — complex schema design, query optimization, and hard data modeling decisions across relational and non-relational stores
• Real-time communication systems — low-latency audio, video, or streaming infrastructure
• Sesame is committed to a workplace where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered.
• We welcome all qualified applicants, embracing diversity in race, gender, identity, orientation, ability, and more.
• We provide reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities.
• Contact careers@sesame.com for assistance.
• ****Full-time Employee Benefits:****
• 401 (k) max employer match: 3.5% of compensation
• 100% employer-paid health, vision, and dental benefits for you and your dependents
• Unlimited PTO and sick time
• Flexible spending account with employer matching up to $1,650/year (medical FSA)

• Guardian Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

• Opportunity to share in the company's success with competitive stock options

Benefits

Compensation

• Range: $175K - $280K
• ****Responsibilities****
• Design and build secure, maintainable, self-serve core infrastructure that engineering teams can rely on and operate independently
• Architect and evolve 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
• Own and scale 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
• Set technical direction within your domain, bring others along through clear communication and well-reasoned proposals, and raise the engineering bar across the team
• ****Required Qualifications****
• A strong systems thinker who is equally comfortable setting direction and getting hands-on with implementation
• 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 shipping services at scale, with all the operational complexity that comes with it
• Kubernetes — significant production experience 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 delivered efficiency gains through automation and have the track record to show it
• Strong communication skills — you can set your own direction, write clearly about tradeoffs, and bring engineers and stakeholders along with you
• 3+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time in infrastructure, platform, or ML systems roles
• ****Preferred Qualifications****
• *We'd love to hear about experience in most 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 architected, maintained, 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 optimization 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 large-scale distributed training and serving systems
• Data engineering — pipeline design, dataset management, or data platform experience
• Database design — complex schema design, query optimization, and hard data modeling decisions across relational and non-relational stores
• Real-time communication systems — low-latency audio, video, or streaming infrastructure
• Sesame is committed to a workplace where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered.
• We welcome all qualified applicants, embracing diversity in race, gender, identity, orientation, ability, and more.
• We provide reasonable accommodations for applicants with disabilities.
• Contact careers@sesame.com for assistance.
• ****Full-time Employee Benefits:****
• 401 (k) max employer match: 3.5% of compensation
• 100% employer-paid health, vision, and dental benefits for you and your dependents
• Unlimited PTO and sick time
• Flexible spending account with employer matching up to $1,650/year (medical FSA)

• Guardian Employee Assistance Program (EAP)

• Opportunity to share in the company's success with competitive stock options

Benefits

Compensation