Staff Engineer, AI

San Franciscofull timeOn Site

Apply on Employer Site

senior

$250k–$350k

H1B: yes

Litellm Staff Engineer, AI at LiteLLM leads the unified API team to ensure new models and providers integrate seamlessly on day one. The role involves owning API unification, triaging open source issues, and enhancing developer experience for LiteLLM's Python SDK and proxy.

Responsibilities

This 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.
Every 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.
You’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.
Lead the unified API team and own new model, endpoint, and provider rollouts end to end.
Design provider-agnostic features at the gateway level, such as session management for non-OpenAI models.
Triage open source issues and outside PRs (new providers, translation fixes) and get them merged, reviewed, or replaced with an internal fix.
Review the AI team's PRs and hold a high bar for code quality, including code written with AI.
Find the power users in your area and use what they need to decide what to build next.
Take on new unification bets with a customer who will use them and give feedback.
Own the developer experience for everyone who uses LiteLLM's Python SDK and proxy.
What is our tech stack
The tech stack includes Python, FastAPI, Redis, Postgres. We're moving the gateway to Rust.

Qualification

3+ years of experienceDeep expertise in LLM APIsTaste in developer experienceCustomer empathyYou've built evals for LLMsYou've used LiteLLM in productionOpen source contributionsWhy join LiteLLM?

Required

You've been a machine learning engineer and now build applied AI products.
3+ years of experience. The scope you've owned matters more than a Staff title.
Deep expertise in LLM APIs. You can speak to the differences between /chat/completions and /responses, and to each provider's nuances.
Experience building or maintaining a unified API that sits in front of many providers.
Taste in developer experience. You can tell when an API or playground is bad and explain why.
Customer empathy. You ask why a user wants something and how big the use case is before you build it.
Ready to lead a team from day one and set the technical bar yourself.
Strong software engineering fundamentals in Python.

Preferred

Experience at a company built on a unified API, such as OpenRouter, Vercel AI SDK, Merge, Segment, or Fivetran.
You've built your own unified API or written about what a good one should do.
You've built evals for LLMs.
You've used LiteLLM in production.
Open source contributions, especially to LLM tooling.
Why join LiteLLM?
Work directly with the founders every day.
Lead the team behind the core of the product: the unified API thousands of engineering teams depend on.

Benefits

Dental
Vision
Equity/RSU

Company

Litellm

View company page

Source: ashby

Active within the past hour

More roles at Litellm

Staff Engineer, Systems and Reliability

San Francisco

Senior Security Engineer, Product & Platform

San Francisco

Senior Security Operations / Detection Engineer

San Francisco

Senior Security Engineer

Remote

Boost Your Interview Chances

Improve Resume Match Score

Free

Your Score

9.0

Strong Applicant

Must-Have Skills for This Role

PythonFastAPIRedisPostgresRustLLM APIs

Optimize my Resume

Apply Faster with Autofill

Free

Save your profile once. LumiJobs pre-fills the employer's application form so you stop re-typing the same answers on every site.

Apply With Autofill

Or skip LumiJobs's tools and submit directly on the employer's career site.

Apply on Employer Site