SWE - Backend Infrastructure Engineer

About SesameSesame 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.ResponsibilitiesDesign and build secure, maintainable, self-serve core infrastructure that engineering teams can rely on and operate independentlyArchitect and evolve a modern ML training infrastructure — scalable, reproducible, and built for rapid experimentationBuild and operate a modern model serving architecture with a focus on reliability, cost efficiency, and low latencyOwn and scale the low-latency voice interface and audio processing pipeline — a technically demanding, performance-sensitive system at the core of Sesame's productBuild 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 youSet technical direction within your domain, bring others along through clear communication and well-reasoned proposals, and raise the engineering bar across the teamRequired QualificationsA strong systems thinker who is equally comfortable setting direction and getting hands-on with implementationHands-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 scaleProven track record of shipping services at scale, with all the operational complexity that comes with itKubernetes — significant production experience operating and scaling Kubernetes clustersExperience designing and shipping flexible domain models and APIs — you think carefully about boundaries, contracts, and long-term maintainabilityA default toward automation — you've consistently delivered efficiency gains through automation and have the track record to show itStrong communication skills — you can set your own direction, write clearly about tradeoffs, and bring engineers and stakeholders along with you3+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time in infrastructure, platform, or ML systems rolesPreferred QualificationsWe'd love to hear about experience in most of these areas — we don't expect any one person to have all of themInfrastructure 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 independentlyML infrastructure — any combination of the following:PyTorch experience, especially model optimization for servingML training or serving experience in generalExperience building ML serving and/or training infrastructure (TorchServe, Seldon, KServe, Ray Serve, or similar)Experience building large-scale distributed training and serving systemsData engineering — pipeline design, dataset management, or data platform experienceDatabase design — complex schema design, query optimization, and hard data modeling decisions across relational and non-relational storesReal-time communication systems — low-latency audio, video, or streaming infrastructureSesame 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 Benefits401 (k) max employer match: 3.5% of compensation100% employer-paid health, vision, and dental benefits for you and your dependentsUnlimited PTO and sick timeFlexible 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 optionsBenefits do not apply to contingent/contract workers.