Forward Deployed Engineer - AI Inference
- Location
- San Francisco, CA (Remote) · On-site
- Job type
- Full-time
- Level
- Senior
- Experience
- 3+ years
- Education
- Bachelor's degree
- Listed
- 23 days ago
Skills & highlights for this role
- Kubernetes
- Docker
- Terraform
- Helm
- GPU model serving
Also useful
- vLLM
- Triton
- Prometheus
Stated benefits & perks
- Health
- Daily meals
- Flexible hours
About the job
FriendliAI is seeking a Forward Deployed Engineer to assist enterprises in deploying, scaling, and operating generative and agentic AI workloads on FriendliAI infrastructure. You will work directly with customers to solve and implement production-grade applications using our products, such as Serverless Endpoints, Dedicated Endpoints, or Container.
Friendli Container is our service that allows customers to download our inference engine as Docker images and deploy it in their chosen environment, such as private clouds or on-premises. Our Friendli Container can be adopted directly to AWS EKS clusters using our EKS add-on product.
You will work directly on our customers’ projects, collaborating with their engineering teams to solve AI inference challenges like scaling, orchestration, and monitoring. This is a hands-on, customer-embedded role. If you have worked in DevOps, platform engineering, or SRE for AI applications, this is your ideal position.
Key Responsibilities
- Design and implement large-scale deployment architectures for LLM and multimodal inference
- Deploy and manage containerized workloads across Kubernetes clusters
- Diagnose production issues, such as performance bottlenecks, and implement temporary fixes as needed
- Collaborate with customers’ DevOps teams to integrate FriendliAI’s infrastructure into their CI/CD workflows
- Develop scripts, Helm charts, and Terraform modules that simplify repeated deployments
- Contribute field insights to shape our platform reliability, observability, and scaling strategies
- Lead workshops, technical sessions, or webinars to help customers master infrastructure best practices.
Qualifications
- 3+ years of experience in cloud infrastructure, DevOps, or reliability engineering
- Bachelor’s or Master's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or equivalent
- Proficiency with Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, and Helm
- Strong foundation in distributed systems, networking, and performance tuning
- Experience with GPU-based computing and generative AI model serving workloads
- Strong technical background in backend systems or AI tooling
- Experience operating workloads on AWS, GCP, or OCI
- Excellent problem-solving and debugging skills in real-world environments
Preferred Experience
- Experience deploying large models (LLMs, diffusion models) on GPUs or clusters
- Familiarity with inference frameworks (Triton, vLLM, TensorRT, DeepSpeed-Inference)
- Familiarity with observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, ELK, OTEL)
- Understanding of networking security and compliance frameworks (e.g., SOC 2)
- Experience supporting on-prem or hybrid-cloud deployments
Benefits
- A front-row seat to the generative AI infrastructure revolution
- Competitive compensation and benefits package
- Daily lunch and dinner provided; unlimited snacks and beverages
- Health check-up and top-tier hardware support
- Flexible working hours and a highly collaborative environment
About us
FriendliAI is the fastest inference cloud for agents, built to run frontier open-weight models in production at scale. It delivers up to 7x faster output token speed, up to 90% lower inference costs, and 99.99% uptime across the most demanding agent workloads - long-context inference, real-time streaming, and accurate tool calling.
We are a small, fast-moving team doing work that matters at one of the most exciting moments in the history of technology. With our world-class inference stack, we are building the platform teams can actually rely on.
From FriendliAI's careers page, first listed on Rolev.ai on October 17, 2026. Rolev.ai is not the employer.
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Common questions
Where is the Forward Deployed Engineer - AI Inference job at FriendliAI located?
Yes, this Forward Deployed Engineer - AI Inference opening at FriendliAI is listed as San Francisco, CA (Remote) (On-site). Always check FriendliAI's application page for specific state eligibility or relocation policies.
What qualifications are required for Forward Deployed Engineer - AI Inference at FriendliAI?
For the Forward Deployed Engineer - AI Inference role, FriendliAI highlights 3+ years of relevant experience; a bachelor's degree; experience with Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Helm, GPU model serving. Rolev.ai can score your existing resume against these requirements and show any skill gaps before you apply.
How do I apply for the Forward Deployed Engineer - AI Inference position at FriendliAI?
This listing links directly to FriendliAI's Ashby application page. You can apply directly on FriendliAI's site, or use Rolev.ai to check your resume fit, generate a zero-hallucination tailored resume and cover letter for this posting, and autofill the Ashby application form in 1 click with the Rolev.ai Chrome extension. You always review the form and press Submit yourself.