Lead Engineer, Inference Platform

MongoDB's mission is to empower innovators to create, transform, and disrupt industries by unleashing the power of software and data. We enable organizations of all sizes to easily build, scale, and run modern applications by helping them modernize legacy workloads, embrace innovation, and unleash AI. Our industry-leading developer data platform, MongoDB Atlas, is the only globally distributed, multi-cloud database and is available in more than 115 regions across AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. Atlas allows customers to build and run applications anywhere-on premises, or across cloud providers. With offices worldwide and over 175,000 new developers signing up to use MongoDB every month, it's no wonder that leading organizations, like Samsung and Toyota, trust MongoDB to build next-generation, AI-powered applications.

About the Role

We're looking for a Lead Engineer, Inference Platform to join our team building the inference platform for embedding models that power semantic search, retrieval, and AI-native features across MongoDB Atlas.

This role is part of the broader Search and AI Platform team and involves close collaboration with AI engineers and researchers from our Voyage.ai acquisition, who are developing industry-leading embedding models. Together, we're building the infrastructure that enables real-time, high-scale, and low-latency inference - all deeply integrated into Atlas and optimized for developer experience.

As a Lead Engineer, Inference Platform, you'll be hands-on with design and implementation, while working with engineers across experience levels to build a robust, scalable system. The focus is on latency, availability, observability, and scalability in a multi-tenant, cloud-native environment. You will also be responsible for guiding the technical direction of the team, mentoring junior engineers, and ensuring the delivery of high-quality, impactful features.

We are looking to speak to candidates who are based in Palo Alto for our hybrid working model.

What You'll Do

Partner with Search Platform and Voyage.ai AI engineers and researchers to productionize state-of-the-art embedding models and rerankers, supporting both batch and real-time inference

Lead key projects around performance optimization, GPU utilization, autoscaling, and observability for the inference platform

Design and build components of a multi-tenant inference service that integrates with Atlas Vector Search, driving capabilities for semantic search and hybrid retrieval

Contribute to platform features like model versioning, safe deployment pipelines, latency-aware routing, and model health monitoring

Collaborate with peers across ML, infra, and product teams to define architectural patterns and operational practices that support high availability and low latency at scale

Guide decisions on model serving architecture using tools like vLLM, ONNX Runtime, and container orchestration in Kubernetes

Provide technical leadership and mentorship to junior engineers, fostering a culture of technical excellence and continuous improvement within the team

Who You Are

8+ years of engineering experience in backend systems, ML infrastructure, or scalable platform development, and the ability to provide technical leadership and guidance to a team of engineers

Expertise in serving embedding models in production environments

Strong systems skills in languages like Go, Rust, C++, or Python, and experience profiling and optimizing performance

Comfortable working on cloud-native distributed systems, with a focus on latency, availability, and observability

Familiarity with inference runtimes and vector search systems (e.g., Faiss, HNSW, ScaNN)

Proven ability to collaborate across disciplines and experience levels, from ML researchers to junior engineers

Experience with high-scale SaaS infrastructure, particularly in multi-tenant environments

1+ years of experience serving as TL for a large-scale ML inference or training platform SW project

Nice to Have

Prior experience working with model teams on inference-optimized architectures

Background in hybrid retrieval, prompt-based pipelines, or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)

Contributions to relevant open-source ML serving infrastructure

1+ years of experience in managing a technical team focused on ML inference or training infrastructure

Why Join Us

Be part of shaping the future of AI-native developer experiences on the world's most popular developer data platform

Collaborate with ML experts from Voyage.ai to bring cutting-edge research into production at scale

Solve hard problems in real-time inference, model serving, and semantic retrieval - in a system used by thousands of customers worldwide

Work in a culture that values mentorship, autonomy, and strong technical craft

Competitive compensation, equity, and career growth in a hands-on technical leadership role

To drive the personal growth and business impact of our employees, we're committed to developing a supportive and enriching culture for everyone. From employee affinity groups, to fertility assistance and a generous parental leave policy () , we value our employees' wellbeing and want to support them along every step of their professional and personal journeys. Learn more about what it's like to work at MongoDB () , and help us make an impact on the world!

MongoDB is committed to providing any necessary accommodations for individuals with disabilities within our application and interview process. To request an accommodation due to a disability, please inform your recruiter.

MongoDB, Inc. provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment and prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type and makes all hiring decisions without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, protected veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by federal, state or local laws.

REQ ID : 3263228668

MongoDB's base salary range for this role is posted below. Compensation at the time of offer is unique to each candidate and based on a variety of factors such as skill set, experience, qualifications, and work location. Salary is one part of MongoDB's total compensation and benefits package. Other benefits for eligible employees may include : equity, participation in the employee stock purchase program, flexible paid time off, 20 weeks fully-paid gender-neutral parental leave, fertility and adoption assistance, 401(k) plan, mental health counseling, access to transgender-inclusive health insurance coverage, and health benefits offerings. Please note, the base salary range listed below and the benefits in this paragraph are only applicable to U.S.-based candidates.

MongoDB's base salary range for this role in the U.S. is :

$137,000-$270,000 USD