
Forward Deployed Engineer, AI Inference – vLLM, Kubernetes
Red Hat
full-time
Posted on:
Location Type: Remote
Location: California • New York • United States
Visit company websiteExplore more
Salary
💰 $189,600 - $312,730 per year
Tech Stack
About the role
- Orchestrate Distributed Inference: Deploy and configure LLM-D and vLLM on Kubernetes clusters. You will set up and configure advanced deployment like disaggregated serving, KV-cache aware routing, KV Cache offloading etc to maximize hardware utilization.
- Optimize for Production: Go beyond standard deployments by running performance benchmarks, tuning vLLM parameters, and configuring intelligent inference routing policies to meet SLOs for latency and throughput. You care about Time Per Output Token (TPOT), GPU utilization, GPU networking optimizations, and Kubernetes scheduler efficiency.
- Code Side-by-Side: Work directly with customer engineers to write production-quality code (Python/Go/YAML) that integrates our inference engine into their existing Kubernetes ecosystem.
- Solve the 'Unsolvable': Debug complex interaction effects between specific model architectures (e.g., MoE, large context windows), hardware accelerators (NVIDIA GPUs, AMD GPUs, TPUs), and Kubernetes networking (Envoy/ISTIO).
- Feedback Loop: Act as the 'Customer Zero' for our core engineering teams. You will channel field learnings back to product development, influencing the roadmap for LLM-D and vLLM features. Travel only as needed to customers to present, demo, or help execute proof-of-concepts.
Requirements
- 8+ Years of Engineering Experience: You have a decade-long track record in Backend Systems, SRE, or Infrastructure Engineering.
- Customer Fluency: You speak both 'Systems Engineering' and 'Business Value'.
- Bias for Action: You prefer rapid prototyping and iteration over theoretical perfection. You are comfortable operating in ambiguity and taking ownership of the outcome.
- Deep Kubernetes Expertise: You are fluent in K8s primitives, from defining custom resources (CRDs, Operators, Controllers) to configuring modern ingress via the Gateway API. You have deep experience with stateful workloads and high-performance networking, including the ability to tune scheduler logic (affinity/tolerations) for GPU workloads and troubleshoot complex CNI failures.
- AI Inference Proficiency: You understand how a LLM forward pass works. You know what KV Caching is, why prefill/decode disaggregation matters, why context length impacts performance, and how continuous batching works in vLLM.
- Systems Programming: Proficiency in Python (for model interfaces) and Go (for Kubernetes controllers/scheduler logic).
- Infrastructure as Code: Experience with Helm, Terraform, or similar tools for reproducible deployments.
- Cloud & GPU Hardware Fluency: You are comfortable spinning up clusters and deploying LLMs on bare-metal and hyperscaler Kubernetes clusters
Benefits
- Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage
- Flexible Spending Account - healthcare and dependent care
- Health Savings Account - high deductible medical plan
- Retirement 401(k) with employer match
- Paid time off and holidays
- Paid parental leave plans for all new parents
- Leave benefits including disability, paid family medical leave, and paid military leave
- Additional benefits including employee stock purchase plan, family planning reimbursement, tuition reimbursement, transportation expense account, employee assistance program, and more!
Applicant Tracking System Keywords
Tip: use these terms in your resume and cover letter to boost ATS matches.
Hard skills
KubernetesPythonGoYAMLAI InferenceKV CachingInfrastructure as CodeHelmTerraformSystems Programming
Soft skills
Customer FluencyBias for ActionRapid PrototypingOwnershipCommunicationProblem SolvingCollaborationAdaptabilityInfluencingFeedback Loop