Senior/Staff Machine Learning Engineer

## About the Company AZX Inc. is a public benefit corporation focused on accelerating positive impact in critical industries through AI transformation. Founded in 2024 and bootstrapped through consulting, AZX has been profitable from the beginning and works with category-leading organizations across real estate, energy, logistics, and utilities. The company develops AI solutions addressing challenges in clean energy, decarbonization, climate risk, energy systems, and global economics. AZX is building for long-term success and aims to create a collaborative environment for professionals passionate about AI and positive impact. ## About the Role AZX is seeking a Senior or Staff-level Machine Learning Engineer to help build the technical backbone for serving and evaluating AI models at scale. This role spans inference infrastructure, including GPU scheduling, autoscaling, and model serving with technologies such as vLLM and SGLang, as well as evaluation systems that measure the impact of model, prompt, and agent changes. The position is a high-impact individual contributor role with significant architectural ownership. You will help establish reliable model-serving systems and develop the guardrails needed to allow engineering teams to move quickly while maintaining safety, reliability, and observability. ### Key Responsibilities * Build and maintain backend services for AZX's LLM gateway, including routing, rate limiting, key management, and observability. * Contribute to sandboxing and isolation infrastructure designed to safely execute agent-generated code. * Work alongside security-focused engineers to strengthen infrastructure safety and isolation. * Support Kubernetes-based platform services, including operators and autoscaling systems adjacent to the inference platform. * Develop high-performance backend services using Go, Rust, or asynchronous Python with frameworks such as FastAPI and Starlette. * Work with infrastructure technologies including Envoy and gRPC. * Instrument services using OpenTelemetry to monitor behavior, latency, and infrastructure costs. * Collaborate across gateway, sandbox, and inference platform teams as priorities evolve. * Work on software projects supporting client engagements and gradually contribute to internal platform capabilities. * Help establish technical direction and architectural standards for reliable model serving. * Build systems and guardrails that enable scalable and safe AI development. ### Required Qualifications * 4+ years of experience with backend engineering fundamentals. * Strong understanding of distributed systems and API design. * Production experience with Go, Rust, or asynchronous Python. * Experience working with production backend systems. * Exposure to Kubernetes and containerization. * Ability to work across multiple areas of platform engineering rather than focusing on a single narrow specialty. * Strong interest in developing deeper expertise in gateway, sandbox, or inference infrastructure. * High emotional intelligence and a strong learning mindset. * Strong collaboration and communication skills. * Ability to make decisions in ambiguous situations and adjust course when needed. * Positive, team-oriented approach and willingness to support the success of others. ### Preferred Qualifications * Familiarity with LLM-specific backend concepts such as rate limiting, caching, and token accounting. * Interest or experience in sandboxing and application security. * Experience working in both startup and enterprise environments. * Experience in energy, real estate, utilities, climate, or related industries. * Experience with additional web frameworks such as Svelte, Vue, or Angular. * Experience with lower-level languages such as C++ or Rust. * Knowledge of networking technologies and paradigms such as GraphQL or WebSockets. * Experience with machine learning frameworks and libraries such as scikit-learn, XGBoost, PyTorch, TensorFlow, JAX, or ONNX. * Experience with graph databases or vector databases. * Experience with CI/CD, Docker, Kubernetes, Terraform, Pulumi, or Bicep. * Experience with generative AI technologies, including prompt engineering, RAG, fine-tuning, or AI tooling ecosystems. ### Work Environment AZX operates in a fast-moving environment where engineers are expected to take ownership, collaborate across technical areas, and make informed decisions despite ambiguity. The role offers opportunities to work across client projects and internal platform development while developing deeper specialization in AI infrastructure, model serving, sandboxing, or gateway systems. ### Compensation and Benefits The provided job description does not specify a base salary range or detailed benefits package. Compensation and benefits information should be confirmed during the hiring process. ## Equal Opportunity AZX is committed to creating an inclusive and respectful workplace where individuals can contribute, learn, and grow. The company values diverse perspectives, equal opportunity, collaboration, and respect for all team members and applicants. AZX supports equality in employment and does not discriminate based on sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, race, color, religion, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by applicable law.