Principal Software Engineer — Backend & Infrastructure - Noida / Bengaluru

About this job

Level AI is a conversational intelligence company backed by top-tier VCs, helping enterprise contact centers understand customer conversations using speech AI, NLP, and retrieval systems. As a Principal Software Engineer for Backend & Infrastructure at Level AI in Noida or Bengaluru, you will own the architectural transition needed for the company's next scaling phase. In this role, you will set technical direction across multiple teams for backend and machine learning infrastructure, make critical architectural decisions, and raise engineering standards. A normal day involves designing distributed messaging systems, scaling GPU infrastructure, optimizing model inference for low latency and cost, conducting design reviews, mentoring senior engineers, and partnering with product and engineering leads across global sites to turn complex problems into clear technical roadmaps.

Responsibilities

• Own architecture for real-time data processing and high-throughput streaming workloads.
• Define and execute the technical roadmap for model training and serving infrastructure.
• Scale GPU infrastructure, capacity planning, scheduling, and utilization across fleets.
• Drive down latency and cost per request for model inference through advanced optimization.
• Drive uptime, observability, and incident response for production serving systems.
• Partner with product and go-to-market teams to scope cross-functional initiatives.
• Lead design reviews and mentor senior engineers to shape engineering practices.

Requirements

• 10+ years building backend and infrastructure systems with large-scale architecture ownership.
• Deep experience with large-scale databases, high-throughput messaging systems, and real-time job queues.
• Proven ability to navigate complex codebases and reason about architectural tradeoffs.
• Experience mentoring senior engineers and driving decisions through influence.
• Strong written communication skills for technical and business cases.
• BTech, MTech, or PhD in Computer Science or equivalent.

Good to have

• Production experience with Django, Celery, Redis, PostgreSQL, and Google Cloud.
• Hands-on experience scaling GPU infrastructure and model inference in production.
• Depth in inference tooling like vLLM, TensorRT, Triton, or Ray Serve.
• Experience scaling a platform through a Series C to D growth stage.
• Background in speech, NLP, or information retrieval systems.

Who should apply

This role is suited for seasoned engineering leaders with over a decade of hands-on experience building large-scale backend and infrastructure systems. Ideal candidates have a proven track record of owning critical system architecture, scaling GPU infrastructure, and mentoring senior talent in global product companies. Freshers should not apply, as this is a senior Principal-level position requiring extensive industry experience in distributed systems and machine learning platforms.

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