Senior Principal Engineer
About this role
The era of pervasive AI has arrived. In this era, organizations will use generative AI to unlock hidden value in their data, accelerate processes, reduce costs, drive efficiency and innovation to fundamentally transform their businesses and operations at scale.
SambaNova Suite™ is the first full-stack, generative AI platform, from chip to model, optimized for enterprise and government organizations. Powered by the intelligent SN40L chip, the SambaNova Suite is a fully integrated platform, delivered on-premises or in the cloud, combined with state-of-the-art open-source models that can be easily and securely fine-tuned using customer data for greater accuracy. Once adapted with customer data, customers retain model ownership in perpetuity, so they can turn generative AI into one of their most valuable assets.
About the team
Our SambaStack inference serving platform is pushing the boundaries of generative AI and large language models. We are a team of passionate innovators tackling some of the world’s most challenging computational problems.
About the role
SambaNova is hiring Principal Software Engineers for the SambaStack platform.
We help enterprises and service providers host their own AI inference platforms, powered by our state-of-the-art RDU (Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit) architecture.
Our cloud-agnostic, enterprise-grade inference serving platform enables seamless deployment, management, and scaling of foundation model workloads at production scale.
As a Principal Software Engineer on the SambaStack team, you will:
- Improve performance, scalability, and reliability
- Introduce new features and platform capabilities
- Design and build components for a state-of-the-art inference serving platform
- Drive technical execution across critical infrastructure initiatives
This is a high-impact, high-visibility role at the intersection of:
- AI infrastructure
- Enterprise software
- Developer experience
Responsibilities
Some of your responsibilities will include:
- Ensure stability, scalability, and performance of the AI inference platform
- Collaborate with ML, Product Managers, QA, and DevOps teams
- Develop components using Python, Go, and Rust
- Build and improve testing frameworks and automation
- Design and implement systems for new AI inference challenges
- Drive engineering excellence and software quality across the platform
Basic qualifications
- 8-12 years of software engineering experience
- Experience building backend systems in Python, Go, or Rust
- Strong experience with Unit testing, Integration testing, and End-to-end testing frameworks
- Solid understanding of Kubernetes and Helm Charts
- Strong understanding of distributed systems and experience building scalable, reliable services
- Excellent problem-solving skills and attention to detail
- Ability to collaborate across cross-functional teams
- Knowledge of software development best practices and coding standards
Preferred qualifications
- Experience with Kubernetes ecosystem, including:
- Familiarity with AI inference serving and orchestration
- Experience with AI coding assistants and related technologies
- Knowledge of ML application optimization and productionization
- Ability to design and build cloud-native systems
Base Salary Range:
Submission Guidelines
Please note that in order to be considered an applicant for any position at SambaNova Systems, you must submit an application form for each position for which you believe you are qualified.
EEO Policy
SambaNova Systems is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard basis of age (40 and over), color, disability, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, national origin/ancestry, race, religion, creed, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding), sexual orientation, and any other applicable status protected by federal, state, or local laws.
Benefits Summary for US-Based, Full-Time Employment Positions
SambaNova offers a competitive total rewards package, including the base salary, plus equity and benefits. We cover 95% premium coverage for employee medical insurance, and 77% premium coverage for dependents and offer a Health Savings Account (HSA) with employer contribution. We also offer Dental, Vision, Short/Long term Disability, Basic Life, Voluntary Life, and AD&D insurance plans in addition to Flexible Spending Account (FSA) options like Health Care, Limited Purpose, and Dependent Care. Our library of well-being benefits available to you and your dependents includes a full subscription to Headspace, Gympass+ membership with access to physical gyms, One Medical membership, counseling services with an Employee Assistance Program, and much more.
Company at a glance
Welcome to SambaNova: Revolutionizing AI Capacity
At SambaNova, we're empowering developers, enterprises, governments, and data centers to unlock their full AI potential. Our full-stack infrastructure, from chips to models, enables lightning-fast performance, low power consumption, and high-efficiency computing.
Our Mission
To give every developer, enterprise, government and data center absolute sovereignty over their own data, models and AI infrastructure – to future-proof the AI workloads that will power and scale tomorrow.
Our Technology
We give our customers the optionality to experience SambaNova through the cloud or on-premise.
Samba Cloud delivers the fastest inferences on the largest open source models like Llama 4 and DeepSeek. Developers can get started building in minutes with our OpenAI compatible APIs. All customers start on the developer tier and when they need more capacity can scale into our enterprise tier.
SambaStack is our on-premise offering which includes the system, the platform, and foundation models. These components combine into a powerful technology stack that delivers unparalleled performance, ease of use, accuracy, data privacy, and the ability to power every use case across the world's largest organizations.
SambaManaged is a modular and ready-to-deploy AI cloud designed to deliver unmatched efficiency for data centers and cloud service providers. This solution allows organizations to quickly deploy advanced AI inference services—without the need for costly infrastructure upgrades or specialized expertise—in as little as 90 days.
At the heart of SambaNova innovation is the Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU). Purpose built for AI workloads, the RDU takes advantage of a dataflow architecture and a three-tiered memory design. The three tiers of memory enable the platform to run hundreds of models on a single node and to switch between them in microseconds. In 2023, SambaNova released its 4th generation RDU chip, the SN40L.
Top Benefits
- Medical insurance
- Dental insurance
- Vision insurance
- Short-term disability
- Long-term disability
- Basic life insurance
- Voluntary life insurance
- AD&D insurance
- Flexible spending account
- Health savings account
- Headspace subscription
- Gympass+ membership
- One medical membership
- Counseling services
- Employee assistance program
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