Engineering Manager, Online Serving and Inference, AI Platform

At Netflix, our mission is to entertain the world. Together, we are writing the next episode - pushing the boundaries of storytelling, global fandom and making the unimaginable a reality. We are a dream team obsessed with the uncomfortable excitement of discovering what happens when you merge creativity, intuition and cutting-edge technology. Come be a part of what’s next.

The Team

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) power the innovation in all areas of the business, including helping members choose the right title for them through personalization, better understanding our audience and our content slate, creating high-quality subtitles, dubbings, images, trailers, and other assets, optimize our payment processing, and much more. The Artificial Intelligence (AIP) organization builds highly scalable and differentiated AI/ML infrastructure to maximize the business impact of all AI practitioners at Netflix, which is the key to accelerating this innovation.

The Opportunity

The Online Serving and Inference team builds and maintains the infrastructure that enables ML practitioners to run their large-scale online serving and inference workflows to deploy AI models for Netflix member scale ecosystems. The team is responsible for the common framework to develop and deploy AI/ML models in Netflix infrastructure to power the AI applications and features.

We are looking for an experienced AI/ML infrastructure engineering leader to lead the development of our next-generation serving and inference platform! You will lead this team to architect, design, develop, test, and launch a brand-new platform to enable ML practitioners across the content, studio, consumer, ads, and games domains to effortlessly package, deploy, and execute inference workflows for thousands of large-scale models, including Large Language Models (LLMs), computer vision and foundation models. The models will come from various lifecycle stages, including early research and experimentation, development, productization, and ongoing innovation and optimization of productized models.

We are a highly collaborative team. You will be highly cross-functional in partnering with other engineering, product management, machine learning, and data teams to take Netflix’s AI initiatives to the next level. To succeed in this role, you will need a strong AI/ ML infrastructure background and a passion for building scalable, robust systems that enable and accelerate our ability to apply large and complex ML models across various domains.

In this role, you will:

• Partner with Applied Research and backend application teams to understand their needs and gather and iterate on the platform's requirements.
• Drive the architecture, design, build vs. buy evaluation, and execution of the online serving and inference platform. Strive for extensibility and ensure the platform can scale to meet the needs of the evolving AI landscape.
• Build a roadmap focused on incremental delivery. Define success metrics, align on migration goals, and drive the platform's adoption.
• Communicate progress to stakeholders, customers, and senior leadership.
• Maintain existing platform offerings, balancing immediate needs in current systems while prioritizing the development of the next-gen platform.
• Hire and grow diverse, highly talented engineers while maintaining and fostering an inclusive team culture.

To succeed in this role, you will need:

• 10+ years of software engineering experience and 3+ years of management experience.
• Experience leading teams responsible for building high-traffic distributed systems and ML infrastructure
• Experience with containerization and orchestration technologies to support data preparation, processing, and inference for large-scale AI/ML models, such as Kubernetes.
• Industry experience working with GPU based mode inference, and serving optimization (batching, latency, cost per request) in large scale computing environments
• Modern Foundation Model, such as LLM, serving and inference stacks such as vLLM, Nvidia Triton, TensorRT LLM, or SGLang.
• Strong technical acumen and can act as a credible technical advisor to the team, set and enforce a high-quality bar for code and system design, and be a mentor for the team.
• A passion for translating the needs of ML practitioners into infrastructure offerings with an eye toward automated and self-serve capabilities.
• Strong communication and collaboration skills and ability to build strong relationships with internal customers and external partners.
• A demonstrated ability to develop, drive, and execute a technical vision and roadmap.
• A track record of attracting top talent and leading and growing high-performance, diverse, and highly talented senior and staff level engineers to maximize their impact and deliver results in a fast-paced and dynamic environment.
• Experience managing a hybrid team with partners and team members distributed across (US) geographies & time zones.

To learn more about our AI Platform, you can review the relevant talks/blog posts on the Netflix ML Platform Research website.

Generally, our compensation structure consists solely of an annual salary; we do not have bonuses. You choose each year how much of your compensation you want in salary versus stock options. To determine your personal top of market compensation, we rely on market indicators and consider your specific job family, background, skills, and experience to determine your compensation in the market range. The range for this role is $523,000.00 - $920,000.00. This compensation range will vary based on location.

Netflix provides comprehensive benefits including Health Plans, Mental Health support, a 401(k) Retirement Plan with employer match, Stock Option Program, Disability Programs, Health Savings and Flexible Spending Accounts, Family-forming benefits, and Life and Serious Injury Benefits. We also offer paid leave of absence programs. Full-time hourly employees accrue 35 days annually for paid time off to be used for vacation, holidays, and sick paid time off. Full-time salaried employees are immediately entitled to flexible time off. See more details about our Benefits here.

Netflix is a unique culture and environment. Learn more here.

Inclusion is a Netflix value and we strive to host a meaningful interview experience for all candidates. If you want an accommodation/adjustment for a disability or any other reason during the hiring process, please send a request to your recruiting partner.

We are an equal-opportunity employer and celebrate diversity, recognizing that diversity builds stronger teams. We approach diversity and inclusion seriously and thoughtfully. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, ancestry, national origin, caste, sex, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity or expression, age, disability, medical condition, pregnancy, genetic makeup, marital status, or military service.

Job is open for no less than 7 days and will be removed when the position is filled.