Senior II Software Engineer Lead – Akamai Inference Cloud

Do you thrive on technical leadership and building cutting-edge AI systems?

Are you ready to drive innovation at the intersection of AI and edge computing?

The Akamai Inference Cloud team is part of Akamai’s Cloud Technology Group. We build AI platforms for efficient, compliant, and high-performing applications. These platforms support customers in running inference models and empower developers to create advanced AI solutions effectively. #AIC

As a Senior II Software Engineer Lead, this role involves leading the design and implementation of vital AI platform components. Responsibilities include building and optimizing systems for OpenAI-compatible endpoints and managing inference workloads across regions. You will mentor engineers, shape technical decisions, and ensure scalable, high-quality solutions. Expertise in AI/ML systems and exceptional problem-solving abilities are essential.

As a Senior II Software Engineer Lead, you will be responsible for:

• Leading the design and implementation of critical platform components for Akamai Inference Cloud, ensuring performance, scalability, and reliability.
• Driving technical decisions for your domain, selecting appropriate tools, frameworks, and approaches for AI inference workloads.
• Mentoring and guiding engineers on the team through code reviews, design discussions, and technical problem-solving.
• Implementing and optimizing containerized AI workloads with hardware-specific optimizations and integrating inference frameworks at scale.
• Collaborating across teams to define technical requirements, contribute to platform standards, and ensure operational excellence.

To be successful in this role you will:

• Have broad software engineering experience with relevant proficiency in distributed systems, cloud services, and platform engineering.
• Demonstrate hands-on experience with AI inference, model serving, or LLM deployment with working knowledge of inference frameworks (TensorRT, vLLM, TorchServe, Triton).
• Show expertise in cloud-native architectures including containerization and orchestration technologies like Kubernetes and Docker.
• Have proven experience building scalable, high-performance systems with modern DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code.
• Demonstrate broad technical leadership through mentoring, code quality advocacy, and ability to drive technical solutions for complex problems.
• Have knowledge of observability, monitoring, and debugging distributed systems.
• Show familiarity with GPU infrastructure and hardware acceleration.

Our ability to shape digital life today relies on developing exceptional people like you. The kind that can turn impossible into possible. We’re doing everything we can to make Akamai a great place to work. A place where you can learn, grow and have a meaningful impact.

With our company moving so fast, it’s important that you’re able to build new skills, explore new roles, and try out different opportunities. There are so many different ways to build your career at Akamai, and we want to support you as much as possible. We have all kinds of development opportunities available, from programs such as GROW and Mentoring, to internal events like the APEX Expo and tools such as Linkedin Learning, all to help you expand your knowledge and experience here.