Product Manager, Inference Platform

Baseten
San Francisco, CA
Hybrid

Who this role is best for

Aimed at technical product managers with a background in AI/ML infrastructure who can translate complex systems engineering into customer-facing value.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with a technical background in ML systems and a track record of shipping performance-critical AI products
    — “Experience building and shipping AI/ML products or infrastructure, particularly where performance, scalability, or production behavior mattered.”
  • Individuals who can simplify complex technical concepts for developers and customers
    — “the taste to make complex technology feel simple”
  • Those who have worked closely with researchers to implement technically complex capabilities
    — “Experience working closely with researchers or infrastructure engineers to bring technically complex capabilities into production.”

Things to consider

  • The role demands a strong grasp of GPU economics and model serving trade-offs, which may require specialized knowledge.
    — “Strong understanding of model serving architectures, GPU economics, and latency, throughput, quality, and cost tradeoffs.”
  • Candidates must be prepared to work directly with customers and field teams, which may involve hands-on problem-solving.
    — “You'll work directly with customers and forward deployed teams”

How to stand out

  • Highlight experience in translating ML research into production-ready features for developers.
    — “Translate advances in batching, caching, quantization, speculative decoding, and serving architectures into useful product features.”
  • Showcase a history of defining benchmarks and evaluating performance improvements for real-world applications.
    — “Define benchmarks and evaluations that demonstrate meaningful improvements in latency, throughput, quality, and cost.”
  • Emphasize your ability to bridge systems engineering and production workloads through concrete examples.
    — “bridge the gap between cutting-edge systems engineering and real-world production workloads.”
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · Team

Derived from job-description analysis by Serendipath's career intelligence engine.

What success looks like

  • Worked with inference engineering and research teams to bring new performance capabilities to customers
  • Defined benchmarks and evaluations that demonstrate meaningful improvements in latency, throughput, quality, and cost
Typical background
Experience building and shipping AI/ML products or infrastructure

Skills & requirements

Required

AI InferenceModel Serving ArchitecturesGPU EconomicsLatency, Throughput, Quality, And Cost TradeoffsBatchingCachingQuantizationSpeculative DecodingServing ArchitecturesPerformance OptimizationRelease ReadinessCompatibilityRegression Testing

Preferred

Ai/ml Products Or Infrastructure

Stack & domain

AIMLInferenceTrainingAgent ExecutionModel ServingPerformance OptimizationBatchingCachingQuantizationSpeculative DecodingServing ArchitecturesBenchmarkingLatencyThroughputQualityCostHardwareModel ConfigurationsAutoscalingRoutingLeadershipCommunicationProblem-solvingTeamworkDecision-makingCollaborationTime Management

About the role

Original posting from Baseten via Ashby

ABOUT BASETEN

Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma, and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F https://www.baseten.co/blog/announcing-our-series-f/, led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to ship AI products.

PRODUCT AT BASETEN

Baseten is building a new cloud for AI. Our ambition is to make inference, training, and agent execution part of one coherent platform, and to shape how the next generation of AI products gets built. Product decisions here reach from the economics of GPU infrastructure to the abstractions developers build on every day.

We’re hiring builders and tastemakers with the ambition to help create that future. You should bring a strong point of view about what should exist, the taste to make complex technology feel simple, and the technical judgment to build it alongside engineers, researchers, and designers. You’ll work directly with customers and forward deployed teams, turn emerging capabilities into new possibilities for developers, and carry an idea from early conviction through to production and adoption.

THE ROLE

Make AI inference faster, smarter, and more efficient at scale.

Making AI models faster and cheaper is one of the most important engineering challenges in the industry. But a faster runtime alone isn't enough. Customers need to understand what improved, whether it works for their models, and how to take advantage of it in production.

We're looking for a deeply technical Product Manager to work alongside our inference engineers and researchers, turning advances in model serving and performance into capabilities customers can confidently adopt.

You'll help bridge the gap between cutting-edge systems engineering and real-world production workloads.

RESPONSIBILITIES

  • Work with inference engineering and research teams to bring new performance capabilities to customers.
  • Translate advances in batching, caching, quantization, speculative decoding, and serving architectures into useful product features.
  • Define benchmarks and evaluations that demonstrate meaningful improvements in latency, throughput, quality, and cost.
  • Understand customer workloads and help prioritize the optimizations that will have the greatest impact.
  • Make performance features easier to configure, evaluate, and adopt in production.
  • Help customers understand tradeoffs across hardware, model configurations, autoscaling, and routing.
  • Partner with engineering on release readiness, compatibility, and regression testing so customers can trust new capabilities.

REQUIREMENTS

  • Experience building and shipping AI/ML products or infrastructure, particularly where performance, scalability, or production behavior mattered.
  • A technical background in software engineering, ML engineering, research, or equivalent hands-on experience.
  • Strong understanding of model serving architectures, GPU economics, and latency, throughput, quality, and cost tradeoffs.
  • Experience working closely with researchers or infrastructure engineers to bring technically complex capabilities into production.
  • A rigorous approach to benchmarking, experimentation, and performance measurement.
  • Strong product judgment and the ability to translate deep technical work into clear customer value.

NICE TO HAVE

  • Hands-on experience with PyTorch, vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, SGLang, NVIDIA Dynamo, or similar technologies.
  • Experience with open-source inference projects, model optimization, or ML systems research.

WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE

Customers can take advantage of Baseten's latest inference optimizations without becoming experts in the underlying runtime. Performance improvements translate into measurable gains in speed, reliability, and cost for real production workloads.

BENEFITS

  • Competitive compensation, including meaningful equity
  • (U.S. only) 100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance for employee and dependents
  • Flexible PTO policy including company wide Winter Break (our offices are closed from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day!)
  • Paid parental leave
  • Fertility and family-building stipend through Carrot
  • (U.S. only) Company-facilitated 401(k)
  • Exposure to a variety of ML startups, offering unparalleled learning and networking opportunities.

Apply now to embark on a rewarding journey in shaping the future of AI! If you are a motivated individual with a passion for machine learning and a desire to be part of a collaborative and forward-thinking team, we would love to hear from you.

At Baseten, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status.

We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law (by example, the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, where applicable).

Source: Baseten careers (Ashby)

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