Software Engineer, ML Platform

Cursor
San Francisco, CA
On-site

Who this role is best for

A natural match if you have experience building distributed systems for ML infrastructure and thrive in a small, flat team environment.

Best fit for

  • Candidates with experience in distributed systems and a passion for ML infrastructure development
    — “strong background in systems / infrastructure software engineering and enjoy building platforms other engineers depend on
  • Individuals who have led production-scale data pipelines or orchestration systems
    — “owned production distributed systems at meaningful scale (ingestion, data pipelines, scheduling/orchestration, or similar)
  • Engineers comfortable with modern orchestration tools and cloud environments
    — “comfortable across Linux, cloud and/or bare metal, and modern orchestration (Kubernetes, Ray, or equivalent)
  • Professionals who enjoy working closely with ML researchers and product engineers
    — “like working closely with ML researchers and product engineers

Things to consider

  • In-person presence is expected in San Francisco or New York offices
    — “we're in-person with cozy offices in North Beach, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Manhattan, New York
  • Limited team size may require wearing multiple hats and handling diverse responsibilities
    — “our team is small and talent dense

How to stand out

  • Highlight experience with telemetry systems and reliable data APIs in your resume
    — “Telemetry — Own the collection and serving path that turns real product use into a record research can trust
  • Emphasize your work with data frameworks and training-data infrastructure
    — “Product Data Platform: data frameworks, Spark / Flink / Ray, ML dataset and training-data infrastructure
  • Showcase your ability to build observability tools for ML experiments
    — “Observability — Make it easy for researchers to start, watch, and debug their own runs
  • Demonstrate your expertise in GPU scheduling and research compute systems
    — “ML DevX and Systems: GPU / cluster scheduling, job queues, node health, research compute developer experience
  • Demonstrate iterative shipping and ownership of system reliability in your interview responses
    — “Ship iteratively in a flat, high-ownership environment. Measure impact, then raise the bar
Pace · Fast PacedCollaboration · HighAutonomy · MediumDecision Impact · Team

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

What success looks like

  • designing and building core platform systems
  • partnering with research to turn recurring pain into durable infrastructure
Typical background
strong background in systems / infrastructure software engineeringowned production distributed systems at meaningful scale

Skills & requirements

Required

Distributed SystemsInfrastructure EngineeringLinuxCloudModern Orchestration

Preferred

Event IngestionProduct Analytics PipelinesOpentelemetry / TracingReliable Data Apis

Stack & domain

Distributed SystemsInfrastructure EngineeringML PlatformLinuxCloudBare MetalModern OrchestrationKubernetesRayOwnershipCollaborationCommunicationTeamworkMLInfrastructure

About the role

Original posting from Cursor via Ashby

Our mission is to automate coding. The first step in our journey is to build the best tool for professional programmers, using a combination of inventive research, design, and engineering. Our organization is very flat, and our team is small and talent dense. We particularly like people who are truth-seeking, passionate, and creative. We enjoy spirited debate, crazy ideas, and shipping code.

ABOUT THE ROLE

As a Software Engineer on ML Platform at Cursor, you'll build the infrastructure that turns real product usage into better models — and keeps research moving fast on large GPU fleets. ML Platform is organized into four teams. Depending on your background, you may join any of them:

  • Telemetry — Own the collection and serving path that turns real product use into a record research can trust; without slowing the product, and under a small, explicit policy. Client-side or high-volume ingestion experience is a plus.
  • ML Data Platform — Build the shared environments and pipeline substrate researchers extend, so new experiments don’t fork their own stack.
  • Observability — Make it easy for researchers to start, watch, and debug their own runs.
  • ML DevX and Systems — Shorten the path from idea to a trusted run on the research fleet.

We're looking for strong distributed-systems and infrastructure engineers who want to sit next to research and ship platform primitives that move the product.

We're in-person with cozy offices in North Beach, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Manhattan, New York, complete with well-stocked libraries.

WHAT YOU’LL DO

  • Design, build, and operate core platform systems used daily by ML researchers and product engineers
  • Partner closely with research to turn recurring pain into durable infrastructure
  • Own reliability, performance, and developer experience for the systems in your lane
  • Ship iteratively in a flat, high-ownership environment. Measure impact, then raise the bar

YOU MAY BE A FIT IF

  • You have a strong background in systems / infrastructure software engineering and enjoy building platforms other engineers depend on
  • You've owned production distributed systems at meaningful scale (ingestion, data pipelines, scheduling/orchestration, or similar)
  • You're comfortable across Linux, cloud and/or bare metal, and modern orchestration (Kubernetes, Ray, or equivalent)
  • You like working closely with ML researchers and product engineers
  • You thrive where ownership is high and the feedback loop is short

ESPECIALLY STRONG BACKGROUNDS BY TEAM

  • Telemetry: event ingestion, product analytics pipelines, OpenTelemetry / tracing, reliable data APIs
  • Product Data Platform: data frameworks, Spark / Flink / Ray, ML dataset and training-data infrastructure
  • Observability: experiment / run monitoring, debug and eval tooling, agent-friendly observability UX
  • ML DevX and Systems: GPU / cluster scheduling, job queues, node health, research compute developer experience

APPLYING

If there appears to be a fit, we'll reach out to schedule 2-3 short technicals. After, we'll schedule an onsite in our office, where you'll work on a small project, discuss ideas, and meet the team.

Source: Cursor careers (Ashby)

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