Staff Software Engineer, Inference

CoreWeave is The Essential Cloud for AI. Built for pioneers by pioneers, CoreWeave delivers a platform of technology, tools, and teams that enables innovators to build and scale AI with confidence. Trusted by leading AI labs, startups, and global enterprises, CoreWeave combines superior infrastructure performance with deep technical expertise to accelerate breakthroughs and turn compute into capability.

What You'll Do:

CoreWeave’s Inference team builds and operates the core cloud platform powering massive-scale GPU workloads for AI/ML, VFX, rendering, and real-time inference. Our stack is engineered for speed, scale, and cost efficiency—providing a powerful alternative to traditional hyperscalers. Infrastructure is our product, and we operate it at massive scale to power the most demanding workloads.

About the role:

As a Staff Software Engineer (IC5) on the Inference team, you will operate as a technical leader across multiple teams and services, driving architecture, performance, and reliability for CoreWeave’s Kubernetes-native inference platform. You will define and lead complex, cross-cutting design initiatives spanning request routing, adaptive scheduling, GPU resource management, and cost-per-token optimization under strict P99 SLAs. This high-impact role requires you to implement advanced inference optimizations—such as speculative decoding and KV-cache reuse—while establishing performance benchmarking frameworks, guiding cross-functional alignment across infrastructure boundaries, and raising the bar for engineering rigor and observability practices.

Who You Are:

• ~8–12+ years of experience building large-scale distributed systems or cloud platforms.
• Proven track record of leading cross-team or organization-level technical initiatives at scale.
• Strong coding skills in Go, Python, or C++.
• Deep expertise in Kubernetes at production scale, including orchestration, scheduling, and service design.
• Strong understanding of networked systems, performance optimization, and distributed system design.
• Hands-on engineering experience with inference systems, including batching/micro-batching strategies, caching, memory optimization, mixed precision (BF16/FP8), and streaming token delivery.
• Demonstrated ability to systematically improve tail latency (P95/P99) and platform reliability through metrics-driven engineering.
• Experienced in owning system-wide SLIs/SLOs, capacity planning, autoscaling strategies, and mentoring senior and mid-level engineers.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical field.

Preferred:

• Direct open-source or production contributions to modern inference frameworks such as vLLM, Triton, TensorRT-LLM, Ray Serve, or TorchServe.
• Deep experience with GPU systems engineering and hardware performance optimization (CUDA, NCCL, RDMA, NUMA, or GPU interconnects).
• Direct exposure to large-scale AI/ML infrastructure or hyperscale cloud environments.

Wondering if you're a good fit? We believe in investing in our people, and value candidates who can bring their own diversified experiences to our teams even if you aren't a 100% skill or experience match. Here are a few qualities we've found compatible with our team. If some of this describes you, we'd love to talk.

• You love to scale highly complex distributed architectures and mentor engineering cohorts to elevate technical standards across an organization.
• You're curious about pioneering low-latency inference optimizations and finding innovative shortcuts to optimize cost-per-token performance.
• You're an expert in metrics-driven engineering, troubleshooting micro-bottlenecks, and delivering stable cloud platforms under strict multi-tenant constraints.

Why CoreWeave?

At CoreWeave, we work hard, have fun, and move fast! We're in an exciting stage of hyper-growth that you will not want to miss out on. We're not afraid of a little chaos, and we're constantly learning. Our team cares deeply about how we build our product and how we work together, which is represented through our core values:

• Be Curious at Your Core
• Act Like an Owner
• Empower Employees
• Deliver Best-in-Class Client Experiences
• Achieve More Together

We support and encourage an entrepreneurial outlook and independent thinking. We foster an environment that encourages collaboration and enables the development of innovative solutions to complex problems. You will be surrounded by some of the best talent in the industry, who will want to learn from you, too. Come join us!

The base salary range for this role is £116,000 to £155,000. The starting salary will be determined based on job-related knowledge, skills, experience, and market location. We strive for both market alignment and internal equity when determining compensation. In addition to base salary, our total rewards package includes a discretionary bonus, equity awards, and a comprehensive benefits program (all based on eligibility).

What We Offer

The range we’ve posted represents the typical compensation range for this role. To determine actual compensation, we review the market rate for each candidate which can include a variety of factors. These include qualifications, experience, interview performance, and location.

In addition to a competitive salary, we offer a variety of benefits to support your needs. The benefits below reflect our US-based offerings for full-time employees; for roles in other locations, benefits vary and are shared during the hiring process. These include:

• Medical, dental, and vision insurance - 100% paid for by CoreWeave
• Company-paid Life Insurance
• Voluntary supplemental life insurance
• Short and long-term disability insurance
• Flexible Spending Account
• Health Savings Account
• Tuition Reimbursement
• Ability to Participate in Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP)
• Mental Wellness Benefits through Spring Health
• Family-Forming support provided by Carrot
• Paid Parental Leave
• Flexible, full-service childcare support with Kinside
• 401(k) with a generous employer match
• Flexible PTO
• Catered lunch each day in our office and data center locations
• A casual work environment
• A work culture focused on innovative disruption

CoreWeave is an equal opportunity employer, committed to fostering an inclusive and supportive workplace. All qualified applicants and candidates will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, disability, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, or genetic information.

As part of this commitment and consistent with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), CoreWeave will ensure that qualified applicants and candidates with disabilities are provided reasonable accommodations for the hiring process, unless such accommodation would cause an undue hardship.