{"id":23731,"url":"https://alion.io/job/cantina-machine-learning-engineer-ops","title":"Machine Learning Engineer, Ops","company":{"id":6569,"name":"Cantina","domain":"cantina.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/cantina","size_band":"51-200","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":89,"open_postings":19,"ghost_share":0.105,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":60,"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"AI/ML","role_family":"AI/ML","seniority":null,"employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"inferred","locations":[],"countries":[],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":125000,"max":165000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":165000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":null,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"CUDA","optional":false},{"name":"CUDA Toolkit","optional":false},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":false},{"name":"KV Cache","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"PyTorch","optional":false},{"name":"SGLang","optional":false},{"name":"Speech Recognition","optional":false},{"name":"TensorRT","optional":false},{"name":"TensorRT-LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Text-to-Speech","optional":false},{"name":"Triton Inference Server","optional":false},{"name":"vLLM","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-07-27T22:31:13Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-07-27","last_verified_at":"2026-10-16T23:02:35Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":81,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":["company_stale"],"days_open":80},"description":"About Cantina:\nCantina Labs is a social AI company, developing a suite of advanced real-time models that push the boundaries of expression, personality, and realism. We bring characters to life, transforming how people tell stories, connect, and create. We build and power ecosystems. Cantina, our flagship social AI platform, is just the beginning.\nIf you're excited about the potential AI has to shape human creativity and social interactions, join us in building the future!\nAbout the Role:\nWe are looking for an ML Engineer to own the production inference stack for our text-to-speech (TTS) and speech recognition (ASR) models, end to end. Our research team delivers trained model checkpoints; you will productionize them as low-latency, real-time streaming services that run cost-efficiently on GPUs. The role covers the inference engines, the Kubernetes infrastructure they run on, and the performance benchmarking and accuracy validation that let us ship changes safely. You will bridge research and production, and own latency, throughput, cost and accuracy as we scale.\nWhat You’ll Do:\nBuild and optimize streaming inference engines for TTS and ASR models, including multi-stage model pipelines.\n\nOptimize latency (time to first chunk, p50/p99) and throughput using continuous batching, CUDA Graphs, torch.compile and mixed precision.\n\nMaintain numerical parity with the reference implementation through automated accuracy regression tests, per stage and end to end.\n\nDeploy and operate GPU inference services on Kubernetes: autoscaling, containerization and infrastructure as code.\n\nBuild CI/CD for model artifacts, with model versioning and reproducible releases.\n\nOwn observability and performance benchmarking: p50/p99 latency, real-time factor (RTF), GPU utilization and cost per request.\n\nPartner with research to productionize new models.\n\nWhat You’ll Bring:\nHands-on experience deploying, scaling and optimizing ML models in production, beyond consuming model APIs.\n\nWorking knowledge of the full inference stack, from CUDA kernels to serving frameworks, with depth in some layers; expertise across all of them is not expected.\n\nGPU performance optimization: profiling (Nsight Systems, PyTorch Profiler), memory bandwidth, CPU-GPU synchronization.\n\nSolid understanding of model serving: continuous batching, KV cache management, request scheduling.\n\nProduction experience with Kubernetes, CI/CD and cloud infrastructure.\n\nStrong Python and PyTorch, and a rigorous approach to performance benchmarking.\n\nExperience with speech or audio models (TTS, ASR, voice conversion).\n\nExperience with inference frameworks such as vLLM (vLLM-Omni), SGLang, TensorRT-LLM, TensorRT or Triton Inference Server.\n\nCompensation:\nThe anticipated annual base salary range for this role is between $125,000-$165,000 (€110,000-€145,000). When determining compensation, a number of factors will be considered, including skills, experience, job scope, location, and competitive compensation market data.\nBenefits for U.S.-based roles:\nCompetitive salary and generous company equity\n\nMedical, dental, and vision insurance - 99.99% of premiums covered by Cantina\n\n42 days of paid time off, including:\n15 PTO days\n\n10 sick days\n\n15 company holidays\n\n2 floating holidays\n\nGenerous parental leave & fertility support\n\n401(k) retirement savings plan\n\nLifestyle spending account - $500/month to use however you’d like\n\nComplimentary lunch and snacks for in-office employees\n\nOne Medical membership, and more!","description_format":"text","description_chars":3493,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":null,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Parental leave","Retirement plans","Vision insurance"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["LLM & Generative AI","Generative Video","Multimodal AI","Social Networks"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-07-27T22:31:13Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":24,"band":"cold","label":"Long shot","p_open":1,"p_active":0.539,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":80,"expected_fill_days":60,"reasons":["conf:0","velocity","win:tail","crowd:"],"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":165000,"is_top_pay":false},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/cantina-machine-learning-engineer-ops","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/cantina-machine-learning-engineer-ops.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-17T01:15:37Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":1792,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-18T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":6569},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=6569"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fcantina-machine-learning-engineer-ops"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fcantina-machine-learning-engineer-ops"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fcantina-machine-learning-engineer-ops"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/cantina-machine-learning-engineer-ops\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fcantina-machine-learning-engineer-ops"}]}