Forward Deployed Engineer, AI Inference; vLLM and Kubernetes

Overview

The vLLM and LLM-D Engineering team at Red Hat is looking for a customer obsessed developer to join our team as a Forward Deployed Engineer. In this role, you will not just build software; you will be the bridge between our cutting-edge inference platform (LLM-D, and vLLM) and our customers' most critical production environments. You will interface directly with the engineering teams at our customer to deploy, optimize, and scale distributed Large Language Model (LLM) inference systems.

You will solve "last mile" infrastructure challenges that defy off-the-shelf solutions, ensuring that massive models run with low latency and high throughput on complex Kubernetes clusters. This is not a sales engineering role, you will be part of the core vLLM and LLM-D engineering team.

• Orchestrate Distributed Inference:
  Deploy and configure LLM-D and vLLM on Kubernetes clusters. Set up and configure advanced deployment like disaggregated serving, KV-cache aware routing, KV Cache offloading etc to maximize hardware utilization.
• Optimize for Production:
  Go beyond standard deployments by running performance benchmarks, tuning vLLM parameters, and configuring intelligent inference routing policies to meet SLOs for latency and throughput. Focus on Time Per Output Token (TPOT), GPU utilization, GPU networking optimizations, and Kubernetes scheduler efficiency.
• Code Side-by-Side:
  Work directly with customer engineers to write production-quality code (Python/Go/YAML) that integrates our inference engine into their existing Kubernetes ecosystem.
• Solve the "Unsolvable":
  Debug complex interaction effects between specific model architectures (e.g., MoE, large context windows), hardware accelerators (NVIDIA GPUs, AMD GPUs, TPUs), and Kubernetes networking (Envoy/ISTIO).
• Feedback Loop:
  Act as the "Customer Zero" for our core engineering teams. Channel field learnings back to product development, influencing the roadmap for LLM-D and vLLM features.
• Travel:
  Travel only as needed to customers to present, demo, or help execute proof-of-concepts.

• 8+ Years of Engineering
  
  Experience:
  
  You have a decade-long track record in Backend Systems, SRE, or Infrastructure Engineering.
• Customer Fluency:
  You speak both "Systems Engineering" and "Business Value".
• Bias for Action:
  You prefer rapid prototyping and iteration over theoretical perfection, and you are comfortable operating in ambiguity and taking ownership of the outcome.
• Deep Kubernetes Expertise:
  Fluent in K8s primitives, from defining custom resources (CRDs, Operators, Controllers) to configuring modern ingress via the Gateway API. Experience with stateful workloads and high-performance networking, including tuning scheduler logic (affinity/tole rations) for GPU workloads and troubleshooting complex CNI failures.
• AI Inference Proficiency:
  Understand how a LLM forward pass works. Know KV Caching, prefill/decode disaggregation, context length impacts, and how continuous batching works in vLLM.
• Systems Programming:
  Proficiency in Python (model interfaces) and Go (Kubernetes controllers/scheduler logic).
• Infrastructure as Code:
  Experience with Helm, Terraform, or similar tools for reproducible deployments.
• Cloud & GPU Hardware Fluency:
  Comfortable spinning up clusters and deploying LLMs on bare-metal and hyperscaler Kubernetes clusters.
• Following is considered a plus:
  Experience contributing to open-source AI infrastructure projects (e.g., KServe, vLLM, Kubernetes);
  Knowledge of Envoy Proxy or Inference Gateway (IGW);
  Familiarity with model optimization techniques like Quantization (AWQ, GPTQ) and Speculative Decoding.

The salary range for this position is $ - $. Actual offer will be based on your qualifications. Pay Transparency:
Red Hat determines compensation based on several factors including but not limited to job location, experience, applicable skills and training, external market value, and internal pay equity. Annual salary is one component of Red Hat’s compensation package. This position may also be eligible for bonus, commission, and/or equity. For positions with Remote-US locations, the actual salary range for the position may differ based on location but will be commensurate with job duties and relevant work experience.

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver high-performing Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Spread across 40+ countries, our associates work flexibly across work environments, from in-office, to office-flex, to fully remote, depending on the requirements of their role. Red Hatters are encouraged to bring their best ideas, no matter their title or tenure.

We're a leader in open source because of our open and inclusive environment. We hire creative, passionate people ready to contribute their ideas, help solve complex problems, and make an impact.

• Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision…