Backend Engineering Manager, Cloud Inference

About Modular At Modular, we’re on a mission to revolutionize AI infrastructure by systematically rebuilding the AI software stack from the ground up. Our team, made up of industry leaders and experts, is building cutting-edge, modular infrastructure that simplifies AI development and deployment. By rethinking the complexities of AI systems, we’re empowering everyone to unlock AI’s full potential and tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges. If you’re passionate about shaping the future of AI and creating tools that make a real difference in people’s lives, we want you on our team. You can read about our culture and careers to understand how we work and what we value. About the role: At Modular, we've rebuilt our inference stack from the ground up. Powering state-of-the-art models at state-of-the-art performance, with full portability across hardware. The Cloud Inference team builds the backend systems that power large-scale LLM inference on Kubernetes—reliable, secure, and performance-obsessed. This role manages a team of backend engineers responsible for the services and control plane around distributed inference (multi-node serving, fleet management, routing, observability, incident response, and operational excellence). You will lead a high-impact group working at the intersection of distributed systems and AI infrastructure. You will partner closely with product and other engineering teams to deliver customer outcomes while continuously raising the bar on reliability (availability, latency, and throughput) and operational maturity. LOCATION: Candidates based in the US or Canada are welcome to apply. You can work in our office in Los Altos, CA or remotely from home. Onboarding for new hires is conducted in-person in our Los Altos, CA office. What you will do: Lead and grow a team of backend engineers building cloud inference services running on Kubernetes (control plane + data plane services). Drive execution across projects with clear scope, milestones, and measurable outcomes. Own operational excellence: on-call readiness, incident response, root-cause analysis, and prevention (SLOs, alerts, runbooks). Partner with stakeholders (product, infrastructure, security, and adjacent engineering orgs) to align priorities, manage tradeoffs, and communicate progress. Establish engineering best practices for design reviews, code quality, testing, safe rollouts, and post-incident learning. Improve system performance and efficiency by guiding teams to use metrics, profiling, load tests, and capacity models (TTFT/TPOT/TPM, utilization, saturation). Build a culture of ownership, clarity, and continuous improvement, helping engineers do their best work and grow in impact. What you bring to the table: 10+ years of experience building and operating production backend systems, with 3+ years of engineering management experience (or demonstrated team leadership at scale). Strong distributed systems fundamentals (reliability, scalability, consistency, failure modes) and comfort working on performance tuning. Hands-on experience operating services on Kubernetes in a cloud environment (deployments, networking, scaling, service mesh or equivalent patterns). Experience running on-call rotations and leading incident response with high standards for follow-through. Ability to translate ambiguous goals into execution plans, and to communicate clearly with engineers and non-engineering stakeholders. A pragmatic approach to building durable systems: security, privacy, and compliance are part of the definition of done. What Modular brings to the table: Amazing Team. We are a progressive and agile team with some of the industry’s best engineering and product leaders. World-class Benefits. In order to attract the best, we need to offer the best. Premier insurance plans, up to 5% 401k matching, flexible paid time off, and more are available to you! Please note that specific benefit packages may vary based on your location. Competitive Compensation. We offer very strong compensation packages, including stock options. We want people to be focused on their best work and believe in tailoring compensation plans to meet the needs of our workforce. Team Building Events. We organize regular team onsites and local meetups in Los Altos, CA as well as different cities. Traveling 2-4 times a year is expected for all roles. Working at Modular will enable you to grow quickly as you work alongside incredibly motivated and talented people who have high standards, possess a growth mindset, and a purpose to truly change the world. The estimated base salary range for this role to be performed in the US, regardless of the state, is $261,000 - $319,000 USD . The estimated base salary range for this role to be performed in Canada, regardless of the province, is $256000 - $313,000 CAD . The salary for the successful applicant will depend on a variety of permissible, non-discriminatory job-related factors, which include but are not limited to education, training, work experience, business needs, or market demands. This range may be modified in the future. The total compensation for a candidate will also include annual target bonus, equity, and benefits, with equity making up a significant portion of your total compensation. For candidates who fall outside of the listed requirements, we nevertheless encourage you to apply as we may have openings that are lower/higher level than the ones advertised.