Level

Featherless AI

Machine Learning Engineer — Inference Optimization

Featherless AI is hiring a Machine Learning Engineer — Inference Optimization for a remote role. Level rates it ; you can apply on Featherless AI.

Level's read on this job

  • On Level's scale, this machine learning engineer role is Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
  • This is listed as a remote role.
  • The posting mentions vLLM and PyTorch among its tools and skills.
  • Featherless AI has 16 other open roles on Level.

AI in this role

vllmpytorch

About the Role

We’re looking for a Machine Learning Engineer to own and push the limits of model inference performance at scale. You’ll work at the intersection of research and production—turning cutting-edge models into fast, reliable, and cost-efficient systems that serve real users.

This role is ideal for someone who enjoys deep technical work, profiling systems down to the kernel/GPU level, and translating research ideas into production-grade performance gains.

What You’ll Do

  • Optimize inference latency, throughput, and cost for large-scale ML models in production

  • Profile and bottleneck GPU/CPU inference pipelines (memory, kernels, batching, IO)

  • Implement and tune techniques such as:

    • Quantization (fp16, bf16, int8, fp8)

    • KV-cache optimization & reuse

    • Speculative decoding, batching, and streaming

    • Model pruning or architectural simplifications for inference

  • Collaborate with research engineers to productionize new model architectures

  • Build and maintain inference-serving systems (e.g. Triton, custom runtimes, or bespoke stacks)

  • Benchmark performance across hardware (NVIDIA / AMD GPUs, CPUs) and cloud setups

  • Improve system reliability, observability, and cost efficiency under real workloads

What We’re Looking For

  • Strong experience in ML inference optimization or high-performance ML systems

  • Solid understanding of deep learning internals (attention, memory layout, compute graphs)

  • Hands-on experience with PyTorch (or similar) and model deployment

  • Familiarity with GPU performance tuning (CUDA, ROCm, Triton, or kernel-level optimizations)

  • Experience scaling inference for real users (not just research benchmarks)

  • Comfortable working in fast-moving startup environments with ownership and ambiguity

Nice to Have

  • Experience with LLM or long-context model inference

  • Knowledge of inference frameworks (TensorRT, ONNX Runtime, vLLM, Triton)

  • Experience optimizing across different hardware vendors

  • Open-source contributions in ML systems or inference tooling

  • Background in distributed systems or low-latency services

Why Join Us

  • Real ownership over performance-critical systems

  • Direct impact on product reliability and unit economics

  • Close collaboration with research, infra, and product

  • Competitive compensation + meaningful equity at Series A

  • A team that cares about engineering quality, not hype

How we rate this

Machine Learning Engineer — Inference Optimization at Featherless AI rates 100 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.

Classification

Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.

  1. ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
  2. ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
  3. ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
  4. ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39

Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.

Prepare for this job

Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.

Skills and AI tools this role asks for

vLLMPyTorch

Also common in machine learning engineer jobs at this level

Pay

Typical machine learning engineer job
$199k

This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical machine learning engineer figure when pay comes up. See machine learning engineer jobs

Questions you could be asked

  1. What's a project where you used vLLM hands-on?
  2. Walk me through how you've used PyTorch in your day-to-day work.
  3. How would you decide a model or AI system is ready to ship?
  4. Tell me about a time a model underperformed in production. How did you find out, and what did you change?

Adapt your resume

  • List these exact terms on your resume: vLLM and PyTorch. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
  • Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
  • Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.

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