{"schemaVersion":"jobsearcher.job.v1","id":"b407f31518b8fde0b4bc78ba","url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/b407f31518b8fde0b4bc78ba","canonicalUrl":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/b407f31518b8fde0b4bc78ba","title":"Forward Deployed Engineer - ML","description":"Forward Deployed ML EngineerWe're looking for Forward Deployed ML Engineers who want to work at the intersection of deep technical work and direct customer impact. As an ML FDE, you'll partner with leading AI companies and foundation model labs to help them achieve state-of-the-art performance on their most demanding workloads — LLM serving, model training (SFT, RLHF), audio pipelines, scientific computing, and more. You're helping teams reach outcomes most engineers can't on their own.The FDE team today includes world-class software engineers, computational scientists, ML engineers, and former founders. We're looking for people with strong engineering fundamentals, deep curiosity across the AI stack, and energy for working directly with customers on hard problems. You will:Work hands-on with companies like Suno, Lovable, Cognition, and Meta to architect and optimize production AI workloads on ModalContribute to open-source projects — members of the team are active contributors to SGLang — and publish technical content that demonstrates Modal's capabilities across the AI stackCollaborate with Modal's product and sales teams, contributing to the platform as both an engineer and a product stakeholderBuild trusted relationships with technical leaders (CTOs, VPs of Engineering, ML leads) at companies doing frontier AI workConduct technical demos, experiments, and proof-of-concepts that make Modal's performance advantages tangibleRequirements:2+ years of professional ML engineering experience, ideally with hands-on work in inference optimization, model training, GPU programming, or ML infrastructureFamiliarity with the serving (e.g., vLLM, SGLang) and training (e.g., slime, verl, TRL) toolchains. You don't need all of these, but you should be able to go deep on at least one.Strong communicator who can go deep on technical architecture with an engineering team and clearly articulate tradeoffs to technical leadershipGenuine interest in working directly with customers — you find it energizing to understand someone else's problem and help them solve itBonus: side projects, open-source contributions, or published work you're proud of in ML or systems performanceWilling to work in-person in New York City, San Francisco, or Stockholm","company":"Modal","rawCompany":"modal","city":"Millbrae","state":"CA","isRemote":false,"isActive":true,"createdAt":"2026-10-03T04:01:50.736Z","occupations":[{"code":"15-1252.00","title":"Software Developers","slug":"software-developers"},{"code":"15-1299.08","title":"Computer Systems Engineers/Architects","slug":"computer-systems-engineers-architects"},{"code":"15-1221.00","title":"Computer and Information Research Scientists","slug":"computer-and-information-research-scientists"}],"industries":[{"code":"541511","title":"Custom Computer Programming Services","slug":"custom-computer-programming-services"},{"code":"541512","title":"Computer Systems Design Services","slug":"computer-systems-design-services"},{"code":"513210","title":"Software Publishers","slug":"software-publishers"}],"jobPosting":{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"JobPosting","title":"Forward Deployed Engineer - ML","description":"Forward Deployed ML EngineerWe're looking for Forward Deployed ML Engineers who want to work at the intersection of deep technical work and direct customer impact. As an ML FDE, you'll partner with leading AI companies and foundation model labs to help them achieve state-of-the-art performance on their most demanding workloads — LLM serving, model training (SFT, RLHF), audio pipelines, scientific computing, and more. You're helping teams reach outcomes most engineers can't on their own.The FDE team today includes world-class software engineers, computational scientists, ML engineers, and former founders. We're looking for people with strong engineering fundamentals, deep curiosity across the AI stack, and energy for working directly with customers on hard problems. You will:Work hands-on with companies like Suno, Lovable, Cognition, and Meta to architect and optimize production AI workloads on ModalContribute to open-source projects — members of the team are active contributors to SGLang — and publish technical content that demonstrates Modal's capabilities across the AI stackCollaborate with Modal's product and sales teams, contributing to the platform as both an engineer and a product stakeholderBuild trusted relationships with technical leaders (CTOs, VPs of Engineering, ML leads) at companies doing frontier AI workConduct technical demos, experiments, and proof-of-concepts that make Modal's performance advantages tangibleRequirements:2+ years of professional ML engineering experience, ideally with hands-on work in inference optimization, model training, GPU programming, or ML infrastructureFamiliarity with the serving (e.g., vLLM, SGLang) and training (e.g., slime, verl, TRL) toolchains. You don't need all of these, but you should be able to go deep on at least one.Strong communicator who can go deep on technical architecture with an engineering team and clearly articulate tradeoffs to technical leadershipGenuine interest in working directly with customers — you find it energizing to understand someone else's problem and help them solve itBonus: side projects, open-source contributions, or published work you're proud of in ML or systems performanceWilling to work in-person in New York City, San Francisco, or Stockholm","datePosted":"2026-10-03T04:01:50.736Z","dateModified":"2026-10-03T04:01:50.736Z","hiringOrganization":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Modal","sameAs":"https://jobsearcher.com"},"jobLocation":{"@type":"Place","address":{"@type":"PostalAddress","addressLocality":"Millbrae","addressRegion":"CA","addressCountry":"US"}},"identifier":{"@type":"PropertyValue","name":"JobSearcher","value":"b407f31518b8fde0b4bc78ba"},"url":"https://jobsearcher.com/jobs/b407f31518b8fde0b4bc78ba"}}