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Staff Software Engineer, Backend Infrastructure

Sesame· Software
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San Francisco, New York, Bellevue$175k - $280kFull-timePosted 5mo ago

About the role

Staff Software Engineer focused on building and maintaining Sesame's backend infrastructure, ML training/serving infrastructure, low-latency voice and audio processing pipelines, and developer tooling to enable rapid, scalable, secure autonomous operation by engineering teams.

Responsibilities

  • Design, build, and maintain secure, maintainable, self-serve core infrastructure that engineering teams can rely on and operate independently.
  • Lead the architecture and evolution of a modern ML training infrastructure — scalable, reproducible, and built for rapid experimentation.
  • Build and operate a modern model serving architecture with a focus on reliability, cost efficiency, and low latency.
  • Lead and own the low-latency voice interface and audio processing pipeline — a technically demanding, performance-sensitive system at the core of Sesame's product.
  • Build developer tooling, server infrastructure, and data infrastructure that is high leverage and low maintenance — the kind that makes other engineers faster without creating new dependencies on you.
  • Lead technical direction within your domain, bring others along through clear communication and well-reasoned proposals, and raise the engineering bar across the team.

Qualifications

  • A strong systems thinker who is equally comfortable leading technical direction and getting hands-on with implementation.
  • 7+ years of software engineering experience, with significant time in infrastructure, platform, or ML systems roles.
  • Hands-on reliability engineering experience — you have well-formed convictions about observability, monitoring, deployment systems, and loosely coupled architectures, and you've put them into practice at scale.
  • Proven track record of building and shipping services at scale, with all the operational complexity that comes with it.
  • Kubernetes — significant production experience building, operating, and scaling Kubernetes clusters.
  • Experience designing and shipping flexible domain models and APIs — you think carefully about boundaries, contracts, and long-term maintainability.
  • A default toward automation — you've consistently built efficiency gains through automation and have the track record to show it.
  • Strong communication skills — you can lead your own direction, write clearly about tradeoffs, and bring engineers and stakeholders along with you.

Skills

Required:System design and architectureKubernetesObservability and reliability engineeringAutomation

Benefits

  • 401 (k) max employer match: 3.5% of compensation
  • 100% employer-paid health, vision, and dental benefits for you and your dependents
  • Unlimited PTO and sick time
  • Flexible spending account with employer matching up to $1,650/year (medical FSA)
  • Guardian Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
  • Opportunity to share in the company's success with competitive stock options
Last updated Sep 3, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.

About Sesame

Bringing the computer to life

We believe in a future where computers are lifelike. Where they can see, hear, and collaborate with us – as we do with each other. With this vision, we're designing a new kind of computer.

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