Back to jobs
tags.new

Forward Deployed Engineer (Inference & Post-Training)

San Francisco

About the role

As a Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) focused on Inference & Post-Training, you will be a hands-on technical partner to our most strategic customers — production AI teams looking to leverage high quality models and do inference at scale. For us, FDE is not a replacement for a Solutions Architect; you will partner with our SAs as a deep-domain specialist in inference optimization, fine-tuning pipelines, and production deployment. As key contributors to both the CX, Engineering, and Sales organizations, FDEs add tremendous value by ensuring we can meet the requirements of our most complex POCs, facilitate successful platform adoption, and guide tailored optimization efforts — directly impacting customer success, company growth, and the hardening of our core platform.

Responsibilities

  • Inference Engine Optimization: Select, configure, and optimize inference engine based on hardware, model architecture, and workload profile
  • Configuration & Performance Tuning: Develop configuration updates to win critical POCs, benchmarks, and optimize customer deployments; tune KV cache, apply speculative decoding, determine optimal tensor parallelism, and determine quantization strategy to hit throughput and latency targets.
  • Post-Training & Fine-Tuning: Drive hands-on RL training runs and optimize system design; guide customers through LoRA, SFT, DPO, RLHF, and GRPO pipelines from experimentation through production.
  • Strategic Customer Alignment: Act as the primary technical point of contact for aligned strategic accounts — monitoring and optimizing endpoint configurations, helping customers get the most out of the platform, and collaborating to ensure we hit critical milestones.
  • Opinionated Onboarding: Establish direct alignment with strategic customers at onboarding; ensure the right inference and post-training configurations are in place from day one to improve time-to-value.
  • Product Feedback Loop: Directly influence our software and model roadmap by surfacing insights from the field. Contribute back to the product where needed to support customer requirements or drive a better experience. Drive early feature and research adoption with strategic logos.

Qualifications

  • Experience: 5+ years in a technical role, with a strong focus on inference systems, open-source LLM deployment, or post-training workflows.
  • Inference Engine Depth: Expert-level, hands-on experience with inference engines (e.g., vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, SGLang); ability to diagnose and resolve performance issues at the engine level.
  • Inference Optimization: Deep knowledge of KV cache tuning, speculative decoding, tensor parallelism, pipeline parallelism, and quantization techniques
  • Post-Training Knowledge: Hands-on experience with fine-tuning and post-training pipelines, including LoRA, SFT, DPO, RLHF, and GRPO; ability to advise on system design
  • Model Landscape Awareness: Broad knowledge of state-of-the-art open-source models and strong judgment on model selection for specific customer use cases, hardware profiles, and performance targets.
  • Coding Proficiency: Strong Python skills; comfortable working in production environments

About Together AI

Together AI is a research-driven artificial intelligence company. We believe open and transparent AI systems will drive innovation and create the best outcomes for society, and together we are on a mission to significantly lower the cost of modern AI systems by co-designing software, hardware, algorithms, and models. We have contributed to leading open-source research, models, and datasets to advance the frontier of AI, and our team has been behind technological advancements such as FlashAttention, Hyena, FlexGen, and RedPajama. We invite you to join a passionate group of researchers on our journey in building the next generation of AI infrastructure. 

Compensation

We offer competitive compensation, startup equity, health insurance, and other benefits, as well as flexibility in terms of remote work. The US base salary range for this full-time position is: $270,000 - $300,000 OTE + equity + benefits. Our salary ranges are determined by location, level and role. Individual compensation will be determined by experience, skills, and job-related knowledge. 

Equal Opportunity

Together AI is an Equal Opportunity Employer and is proud to offer equal employment opportunity to everyone regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, gender identity, veteran status, and more.

Please see our Privacy Policy at https://www.together.ai/privacy

Create a Job Alert

Interested in building your career at Together AI? Get future opportunities sent straight to your email.

Apply for this job

*

indicates a required field

Resume/CV*

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Cover Letter

Accepted file types: pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf

Select...
Select...

U.S. Standard Demographic Questions

We invite applicants to share their demographic background. If you choose to complete this survey, your responses may be used to identify areas of improvement in our hiring process.
Select...
Select...
Select...
Select...
Select...
Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification

For government reporting purposes, we ask candidates to respond to the below self-identification survey. Completion of the form is entirely voluntary. Whatever your decision, it will not be considered in the hiring process or thereafter. Any information that you do provide will be recorded and maintained in a confidential file.

As set forth in Together AI’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy, we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.

Select...
Select...
Race & Ethnicity Definitions

If you believe you belong to any of the categories of protected veterans listed below, please indicate by making the appropriate selection. As a government contractor subject to the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), we request this information in order to measure the effectiveness of the outreach and positive recruitment efforts we undertake pursuant to VEVRAA. Classification of protected categories is as follows:

A "disabled veteran" is one of the following: a veteran of the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service who is entitled to compensation (or who but for the receipt of military retired pay would be entitled to compensation) under laws administered by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; or a person who was discharged or released from active duty because of a service-connected disability.

A "recently separated veteran" means any veteran during the three-year period beginning on the date of such veteran's discharge or release from active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval, or air service.

An "active duty wartime or campaign badge veteran" means a veteran who served on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service during a war, or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized under the laws administered by the Department of Defense.

An "Armed forces service medal veteran" means a veteran who, while serving on active duty in the U.S. military, ground, naval or air service, participated in a United States military operation for which an Armed Forces service medal was awarded pursuant to Executive Order 12985.

Select...

Voluntary Self-Identification of Disability

Form CC-305
Page 1 of 1
OMB Control Number 1250-0005
Expires 04/30/2026

Why are you being asked to complete this form?

We are a federal contractor or subcontractor. The law requires us to provide equal employment opportunity to qualified people with disabilities. We have a goal of having at least 7% of our workers as people with disabilities. The law says we must measure our progress towards this goal. To do this, we must ask applicants and employees if they have a disability or have ever had one. People can become disabled, so we need to ask this question at least every five years.

Completing this form is voluntary, and we hope that you will choose to do so. Your answer is confidential. No one who makes hiring decisions will see it. Your decision to complete the form and your answer will not harm you in any way. If you want to learn more about the law or this form, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) website at www.dol.gov/ofccp.

How do you know if you have a disability?

A disability is a condition that substantially limits one or more of your “major life activities.” If you have or have ever had such a condition, you are a person with a disability. Disabilities include, but are not limited to:

  • Alcohol or other substance use disorder (not currently using drugs illegally)
  • Autoimmune disorder, for example, lupus, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis, HIV/AIDS
  • Blind or low vision
  • Cancer (past or present)
  • Cardiovascular or heart disease
  • Celiac disease
  • Cerebral palsy
  • Deaf or serious difficulty hearing
  • Diabetes
  • Disfigurement, for example, disfigurement caused by burns, wounds, accidents, or congenital disorders
  • Epilepsy or other seizure disorder
  • Gastrointestinal disorders, for example, Crohn's Disease, irritable bowel syndrome
  • Intellectual or developmental disability
  • Mental health conditions, for example, depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, PTSD
  • Missing limbs or partially missing limbs
  • Mobility impairment, benefiting from the use of a wheelchair, scooter, walker, leg brace(s) and/or other supports
  • Nervous system condition, for example, migraine headaches, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis (MS)
  • Neurodivergence, for example, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, other learning disabilities
  • Partial or complete paralysis (any cause)
  • Pulmonary or respiratory conditions, for example, tuberculosis, asthma, emphysema
  • Short stature (dwarfism)
  • Traumatic brain injury
Select...

PUBLIC BURDEN STATEMENT: According to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 no persons are required to respond to a collection of information unless such collection displays a valid OMB control number. This survey should take about 5 minutes to complete.