Forward Deployed Engineer, Strategic Inference
Tune inference for strategic customers so their models hit the throughput and latency they need.
- San Francisco, with remote flexibility
- Full time
- 5 or more years
- US base salary of $270,000 to $300,000, which the posting writes as OTE, plus equity and benefits
This job is open.
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“You’d be the inference specialist beside the solutions architects, rather than their replacement.”
Who it suits
A good fit
- Have 5 or more years in a technical role, with a strong focus on system optimization
- Like tuning a serving stack until a proof of concept wins
- Want to be the technical point of contact for a strategic account
Think twice
- Haven’t optimized a production system
- Want to own the customer relationship without the tuning work
- Don’t want to be on the hook for a latency target
What you’d do
- Choose, configure, and optimize the inference engine for the hardware, the model, and the workload.
- Tune cache, speculative decoding, parallelism, and quantization to hit throughput and latency.
- Be the technical point of contact for strategic accounts, from the day-one inference setup onward.
- Bring what the field needs back into the software and model roadmap.
What they ask for
- You have 5 or more years in a technical role, focused on system optimization.
- You have recent experience with open-source model deployments and engines such as vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, or SGLang.
- You write Python in production.
- You have led complex technical projects.
How it works
- Together AI lists that range as the US base salary and as on-target earnings, plus equity and benefits.
- Together AI offers remote flexibility, and it doesn’t say how many days are in the office or on site with a customer.
What to know about this job
Open at least 8 weeks
- Week 8This job has been open this long
- Week 12Half of San Francisco FDE jobs have closed
In November 2026, Together AI had 3 forward deployed engineer jobs open, in San Francisco and Singapore. This same posting was listed by June 2026 as Forward Deployed Engineer (Inference & Post-Training). The board title is now Strategic Inference, updated 2 November 2026.
The deployment lead, 40% of San Francisco FDE jobs
- 56%The builder. This kind ships production code into the customer’s systems, including integrations, data pipelines, and agents.
- 40%The deployment lead (this job). Scopes the customer’s problem, runs the rollout and makes sure the product delivers what was promised.
Shares of open FDE jobs in San Francisco.
Most new San Francisco forward deployed engineers weren’t forward deployed engineers before
- 90% of people who became forward deployed engineers in San Francisco weren’t forward deployed engineers in their last job.
- 46% of them came from a startup or scale-up.
Together AI lists US base salary of $270,000 to $300,000, which the posting writes as OTE, plus equity and benefits for this job
The San Francisco forward deployed engineer guide shows what forward deployed engineers in San Francisco expect to earn.
What San Francisco forward deployed engineers earnWorth asking the hiring team
- “Which of vLLM, TensorRT-LLM, and SGLang do customers actually run today?”
- “How is the work split with the solutions architect on the same account?”
Jack’s take on Together AI
- Annual bookings crossed $1.15B in the quarter before July 2026
- Its last announced valuation is $8.3B
- The team grew from 80 to more than 300 people in under 2 years
- Its cofounder is CEO, with a chief scientist who created FlashAttention
- The San Francisco office serves meals, and the offer includes flexible time off and equity
- Based in San Francisco, Amsterdam and London
- Founded 2022
- 77 open jobs
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About this page
Jack & Jill isn’t Together AI’s recruiter. We summarized this job from Together AI’s public careers page, where you can apply. We check whether it’s still open each time you open this page. The market numbers come from our San Francisco forward deployed engineer guide and the company facts from Together AI’s page. We last checked this summary against the posting on November 9, 2026. Jack’s take is Jack & Jill’s own.