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Engineering Full-Time
Inworld

Staff/Principal Software Engineer (US)

Inworld • Mountain View, CA

Company

Inworld

Annual salary

$280k – $350k/yr

Location

Mountain View, CA

Listed

64d ago

Experience:
8+ years
Workplace:
Hybrid, 3 days/week on-site at the Mountain View, CA office (flexible on which days). For candidates in British Columbia, Canada, this is a remote position.
Equity:
Competitive equity

Hybrid in Mountain View, CA.

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What you'll do

  • Own core backend systems for Inworld Router, an intelligent routing layer across 200+ LLMs with multi-provider failover, cost/latency-based routing, and real-time observability at massive scale
  • Build and scale API-based model services (TTS, STT, LLM, Knowledge/RAG) powering consumer-facing AI applications with hundreds of millions of end users
  • Design and implement realtime, low-latency systems for speech-to-speech and Realtime API products
  • Collaborate closely with PMs, engineers, and sibling ML teams to determine the biggest product needs and ship quickly in a rapidly evolving AI landscape
  • Drive system improvements and advocate for new technical standards, dependencies, and architectural decisions with considerable technical autonomy
  • Work on ambitious new products launching later this year, including platformization of new offerings and system-wide infrastructure projects

What you need

  • We need a Staff/Principal-level backend engineer with 8+ years of experience building and deploying cloud-based services at scale who thrives in a fast-moving startup environment. You should be comfortable working as a strong IC with technical autonomy, have a track record of shipping zero-to-one platform products, and bring adaptability across tools and programming languages. Bonus points if you have experience with AI products, founder experience, or have worked at high-caliber companies like Databricks or similar AI/infrastructure startups.

Key context:

  • This is a pure IC role, no management responsibilities, but strong ownership expected

  • Flat team structure reporting to the VP of Engineering (~7-8 person team)

  • AI tools and agents are embraced in the development workflow and interview process

  • Startup experience is strongly preferred, candidates from only large tech companies without any startup background are not a fit

  • Adaptability across tools and languages is valued over deep specialization in a single language

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I apply for the Staff/Principal Software Engineer (US) role at Inworld? +

Use the Apply for a referral button on this page to send us your LinkedIn and CV. If your experience fits, we'll introduce you to the recruiter filling this role. They'll email you to check you're interested, then put you forward for this job or others that suit you better. It's free.

What does this Inworld role pay? +

The listing gives $280k – $350k/yr.

Is this role remote? +

The listing gives the location as Mountain View, CA. Hybrid, 3 days/week on-site at the Mountain View, CA office (flexible on which days). For candidates in British Columbia, Canada, this is a remote position.

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