Director, Software Engineering

SambaNova Systems • San Jose, CA

12d

About The Position

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. About SambaNova Join the company that's building the future of AI computing. SambaNova is disrupting the AI and high-performance computing space with an integrated hardware and software platform. Our SambaStack inference serving platform is pushing the boundaries of inference serving for 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 a Software Engineering Manager 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) hardware architecture . Our cloud-agnostic, enterprise-grade inference serving platform enables seamless deployment, management, and scaling of foundation model workloads at production scale. As an Engineering Manager on the SambaStack team, you will lead a high-performing team of engineers while remaining a hands-on technical contributor. You will be responsible for the growth and effectiveness of your team, the technical quality of their output, and driving key engineering initiatives while continuing to contribute directly on the platform's most important challenges. This is a high-impact, high-visibility role combining: People leadership and team development AI infrastructure Enterprise software Systems architecture and design

Requirements

• 12+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years leading and managing engineering teams.
• Demonstrated ability to manage, develop, and hire strong engineers while remaining a hands-on technical contributor.
• Strong technical depth in backend systems built with Python, Go, or Rust.
• Solid understanding of Kubernetes, distributed systems principles, and building scalable, reliable services.
• Proven ability to drive engineering excellence across an engineering team.
• Excellent communication skills: able to work effectively with engineers, cross-functional partners, and senior leadership.
• Experience running iterative engineering processes in a fast-paced environment.

Nice To Haves

• Familiarity with AI inference serving, orchestration, and the infrastructure challenges of LLM workloads at production scale.
• Experience with Kubernetes ecosystem tooling, including Operators and Helm Charts.
• Background in ML application optimization and productionization.
• Experience building or managing teams that deliver cloud-native platforms for enterprise customers.
• Familiarity with AI coding assistants and the developer tooling ecosystem.
• Experience at a high-growth AI infrastructure company.

Responsibilities

• Lead, grow, and inspire a software team, fostering a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
• Own hiring for your team: define roles, assess candidates, and build a diverse, high-performing engineering organization.
• Drive the career development of your engineers through regular 1:1s, meaningful feedback, and clear growth plans.
• Set clear goals and expectations, track team progress, and remove blockers to keep the team executing effectively.
• Partner with Product, ML, QA, and DevOps leadership to align team priorities with broader organizational objectives.
• Champion a healthy, inclusive engineering culture within the SambaStack engineering organization.
• Contribute directly as a software engineer: designing systems, writing code, and leading implementation on critical platform initiatives.
• Participate in and lead design reviews, providing authoritative technical guidance on major features and cross-cutting changes.
• Establish and uphold engineering standards, best practices, and coding quality across the team.
• Proactively identify and drive the resolution of systemic risks: performance bottlenecks, reliability gaps, and scaling constraints.
• Mentor engineers at all levels, growing technical depth and architectural thinking across the team.
• Stay current on emerging technologies and AI inference trends to inform the team's technical direction.

Benefits

• Equity
• 95% premium coverage for employee medical insurance
• 77% premium coverage for dependents
• Health Savings Account (HSA) with employer contribution
• Dental insurance
• Vision insurance
• Short/Long term Disability insurance
• Basic Life insurance
• Voluntary Life insurance
• AD&D insurance
• Flexible Spending Account (FSA) options (Health Care, Limited Purpose, and Dependent Care)
• Headspace subscription
• Gympass+ membership
• One Medical membership
• Counseling services with an Employee Assistance Program

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Manager
• Education Level: No Education Listed