{"id":3972790,"url":"https://alion.io/job/litellm-staff-engineer-ai","title":"Staff Engineer, AI","company":{"id":20631,"name":"LiteLLM","domain":"litellm.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/litellm","size_band":null,"is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Ashby","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":100,"open_postings":12,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":46,"computed_at":"2026-11-09T06:03:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"staff","employment_type":"full_time","work_mode":"on_site","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["San Francisco, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":250000,"max":350000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":350000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":3,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":true,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"Anthropic","optional":false},{"name":"LiteLLM","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"OpenAI","optional":false},{"name":"Python","optional":false},{"name":"FastAPI","optional":true},{"name":"Fivetran","optional":true},{"name":"Machine Learning","optional":true},{"name":"OpenRouter","optional":true},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":true},{"name":"Redis","optional":true},{"name":"Rust","optional":true},{"name":"Vercel AI SDK","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-11-09T14:41:17Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-11-09","last_verified_at":"2026-11-09T16:49:48Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":0,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":0},"description":"LiteLLM is the world’s most popular AI Gateway, trusted by companies like Adobe, Netflix, and NASA. We’ve grown ARR 6x in the last year to nearly $30M with a team of 20, and developers use LiteLLM to call 100+ LLM providers through one API.\nWe're looking for a Staff Engineer to lead our unified API team and make sure every new model and provider works with LiteLLM on day one.\nAbout the role\nThis is a hands-on technical lead role. You'll own how LiteLLM unifies LLM APIs across the OpenAI and Anthropic specs, lead the engineers who build it, and set the bar for what good looks like.\nEvery week a provider ships something new: a new API, a new modality, a new feature. The promise of LiteLLM is that it works with all of them on day one. Your job is to keep that promise: new endpoints ship on day one, open source translation issues go down, and developers can count on LiteLLM to keep up.\nYou’ll lead our open source pod, where most issues are LLM translation issues. You’ll report to the CEO, and later to our Head of Engineering. This role is in person in San Francisco. We help with relocation and support H-1B transfers.\nResponsibilities\nLead the unified API team and own new model, endpoint, and provider rollouts end to end.\n\nDesign provider-agnostic features at the gateway level, such as session management for non-OpenAI models.\n\nTriage open source issues and outside PRs (new providers, translation fixes) and get them merged, reviewed, or replaced with an internal fix.\n\nReview the AI team's PRs and hold a high bar for code quality, including code written with AI.\n\nFind the power users in your area and use what they need to decide what to build next.\n\nTake on new unification bets with a customer who will use them and give feedback.\n\nOwn the developer experience for everyone who uses LiteLLM's Python SDK and proxy.\n\nWhat is our tech stack\nThe tech stack includes Python, FastAPI, Redis, Postgres. We're moving the gateway to Rust.\nWhat we're looking for\nYou've been a machine learning engineer and now build applied AI products.\n\n3+ years of experience. The scope you've owned matters more than a Staff title.\n\nDeep expertise in LLM APIs. You can speak to the differences between /chat/completions and /responses, and to each provider's nuances.\n\nExperience building or maintaining a unified API that sits in front of many providers.\n\nTaste in developer experience. You can tell when an API or playground is bad and explain why.\n\nCustomer empathy. You ask why a user wants something and how big the use case is before you build it.\n\nReady to lead a team from day one and set the technical bar yourself.\n\nStrong software engineering fundamentals in Python.\n\nBonus points\nExperience at a company built on a unified API, such as OpenRouter, Vercel AI SDK, Merge, Segment, or Fivetran.\n\nYou've built your own unified API or written about what a good one should do.\n\nYou've built evals for LLMs.\n\nYou've used LiteLLM in production.\n\nOpen source contributions, especially to LLM tooling.\n\nWhy join LiteLLM?\nWork directly with the founders every day.\n\nLead the team behind the core of the product: the unified API thousands of engineering teams depend on.\n\nOwn a whole area of the product. We don't have PMs: engineers talk to customers and decide what to build.\n\nYour work ships in open source, used by engineering teams around the world.\n\nMove incredibly fast and see your work in production immediately.\n\nCompetitive salary, equity, health, dental, and vision benefits.\n\nAbout LiteLLM\nLiteLLM is the world's most widely adopted AI Gateway. We provide a unified API for 100+ LLM providers along with routing, authentication, budgets, observability, and governance for production AI systems. Thousands of companies rely on LiteLLM to power AI in production.\nIf you want to lead the team that keeps LiteLLM ahead of every model launch, we'd love to meet you.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3874,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":3,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":true,"industries":["LLM & Generative AI","AI Compute & Inference","AI Development Tools"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-11-09T16:49:48Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":86,"band":"hot","label":"Hiring now","p_open":1,"p_active":0.86,"p_room":1,"age_days":0,"expected_fill_days":46,"reasons":["conf:2","win:early"],"computed_at":"2026-11-09T19:13:31Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":350000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/litellm-staff-engineer-ai","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/litellm-staff-engineer-ai.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-11-09T19:13:31Z","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":4798,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-11-10T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01,"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":20631},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=20631"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Flitellm-staff-engineer-ai"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":2,"usd":0.2},"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%2Flitellm-staff-engineer-ai"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.1,"usd":0.01},"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%2Flitellm-staff-engineer-ai"},{"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/litellm-staff-engineer-ai\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Flitellm-staff-engineer-ai"}],"agent":{"mcp":"https://alion.io/mcp/jobs","mcp_open":"https://alion.io/mcp/open","next":[{"tool":"get_job","arguments":{"id":3972790}},{"tool":"search_jobs","arguments":{"company":"litellm.ai","detail":"compact"}},{"tool":"match_people","arguments":{"job_id":3972790},"note":"people open to offers who fit this vacancy"}],"note":"The same data through MCP tools: https://alion.io/mcp/open needs no sign-in (compact searches, postings, people); https://alion.io/mcp with an Alion account has everything. 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