> AI agents: this is one page of Nextmove’s FDE site, in Markdown. Nextmove is a job board and free career service for forward deployed engineers (FDEs). Each posting is classified from its text, not its title: the kind of work, how much of it is production code, pre-sales weight, time at customer sites, travel, remote arrangement, level and posted base pay. The site also publishes the aggregates: median pay by level, metro, company and kind of work, and which companies started hiring FDEs each week. Every page under https://nextmove.md/fde is served this way; the index of pages is https://nextmove.md/llms.txt. # Member of Technical Staff Canonical URL: https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/7cacb3e166260f2d Wafer posts a FDE role to build what the customer runs in San Francisco, CA, at $250,000–$250,000 base, above the senior FDE median of $190,000 across 1,864 postings with pay. Build and operate the kernels, runtimes, agents, and infrastructure that optimize inference workloads across heterogeneous accelerators. Read from the employer’s posting on November 8, 2026. - [Wafer](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/wafer) Posted Jul 20, 2026 by Wafer · open on Ashby as of Nov 8, 2026 **$250,000–$250,000** + equity San Francisco, CA On-site Full-time Build and operate the kernels, runtimes, agents, and infrastructure that optimize inference workloads across heterogeneous accelerators. - [See roles that fit me](https://nextmove.md/sign-up?from=%2Ffde%2Fjobs%2F7cacb3e166260f2d&placement=top) - [View posting at Wafer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/wafer/24e660d5-090d-4dc5-9a5f-274ba853e751/application) Free. Upload your resume once, see why each FDE role fits, and get introduced only when you say so. ## At a glance ### Posted base pay $250K–$250K Above the median Midpoint $250K · median $190K This job $250K to $250K. Senior FDE postings, 1,864 postings: the middle 50% of posted pay is $160K to $220K, median $190K. ### The work Builds what the customer runs Balance **Mostly building** Project stages 1. Pre-sales (not covered) 2. Proof of concept (not covered) 3. Implementation 4. Operations - **Coding**: Writes production code - **Builds for**: External customers - **Level**: Senior - **Role**: Individual contributor ### What they ask for Visa - **Sponsors visas** ### Do you meet what the posting states? The posting reads as a senior role. What level are you at now? The job is in San Francisco, CA. Could you work there? Which of these have you used in production? Answer each one. Nothing is saved or sent. [What postings ask for, by background →](https://nextmove.md/fde/paths) ## Conditions - **Location**: San Francisco, CA - **Work arrangement**: On-site - **Employment type**: Full-time - **Visa sponsorship**: Available - **Pay**: ## More like this [Handshake (AI training)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/handshake-ai-training) ### [Senior Forward Deployed Engineer, Enterprise AI](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/c364266bec560fc4) San Francisco, CA · New York, NY On-site 7w ago $220,000–$300,000 [Distyl AI](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/distyl-ai) ### [AI Engineer, Lead](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/7385f7a8daf147a4) San Francisco, CA · New York, NY Hybrid 4mo ago $200,000–$250,000 [Sim](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/sim) ### [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/f40e24220cfe7740) San Francisco, CA On-site 6w ago $190,000–$250,000 - [Other jobs at Wafer (1)](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/wafer) ## The job description from Wafer Posted by Wafer on Jul 20, 2026 ### Member of Technical Staff Inference performance depends on how efficiently models use the underlying hardware. Techniques across kernels, compilers, runtimes, and serving systems can dramatically improve latency and throughput, but these optimizations are difficult, hardware-specific, and slow to reproduce across new accelerators. And none of it counts until it is running in a customer's production traffic. At Wafer, we are building AI systems that automatically optimize inference workloads across silicon. The goal is fungible token capacity. Any accelerator optimized toward serving inference most efficiently. Wafer is well funded and serves trillions of tokens a month for mission critical workloads. We serve the highest performance inference to fast-growing AI startups. Members of Technical Staff build the systems that make that possible: the kernels, runtimes, agents and infrastructure behind every workload we serve. Our forward deployed engineers run customer deployments day to day and bring you in on the hardest problems. ### What you'll do - Develop and optimize high-performance computing kernels, and work across inference engine internals and serving infrastructure - Develop AI agents to do autonomous inference engineering - Design, deploy, and operate heterogeneous clusters across vendors - Take on the hardest customer problems. When a workload needs a fix in the engine, the kernels or the agents, our forward deployed engineers bring it to you and you solve it - Inform product roadmap. You sit closer than anyone to how Wafer behaves under real load, and the engineering team builds against what you report ### What we look for - You are an exceptional engineer. You have shipped and operated production systems, and you can still open a profiler, read a trace, and find the problem yourself. Inference experience helps, but it matters more that you can be handed an unfamiliar system and own it inside a week. - You are credible in a room full of engineers. You can take a skeptical ML team through a benchmark, defend the methodology, and concede the point when they are right. - You work without a spec. The problem arrives half-defined from a customer who does not yet know what they need, and you come back with a scoped answer rather than a list of questions. ### How we evaluate We score every candidate on seven values: 1. Infinitely Resourceful 2. Exceptionalism 3. Unreasonable Standards 4. Company Over Self 5. High EQ 6. Learns Quickly 7. First Principles Thinker ### Compensation and benefits - $250K + generous equity. - Fully covered medical, dental, and vision insurance. - Daily lunch and dinner, unlimited PTO, and parental leave. - $1K/month housing stipend (post-tax) if you live within walking distance (0.5 miles) from the office. - Covered Uber/Waymo from/to office. - Relocation allowance and benefits. - Visa sponsorship available. ### How we work On-site in San Francisco, five days a week. Small team with massive surface area and ownership. You operate with complete autonomy of how to solve problems. We don't see engineers as code writers, but as problem solvers. You will work across the stack to build a company scaling extremely quickly. This is not a role that lives in meetings. Nearly all of your time is engineering. What makes it different is who that engineering is for: you are responsible for a named set of customers, their workloads run on what you build, and you are the person they hear from when it matters. [View posting at Wafer](https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/wafer/24e660d5-090d-4dc5-9a5f-274ba853e751/application) ## About Wafer Continuously optimizes and serves AI inference workloads across models, kernels, serving engines, and accelerator hardware. Series A · 10–50 people ## Similar jobs [Snorkel AI](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/snorkel-ai) ### [Senior/Staff Forward Deployed Engineer - Computer Use Agents](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/a1a38531f7571d5a) New York, NY · San Francisco, CA Hybrid 2mo ago $180,000–$320,000 [OpenClaw Foundation](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/openclaw-foundation) ### [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/bc34865d20736808) San Francisco, CA On-site 4mo ago $200,000–$300,000 [ChipAgents](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/chipagents) ### [Software Engineer, ML for EDA](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/5b4582d6cf8deb16) San Jose, CA On-site New · 4d ago $150,000–$350,000 [Binti](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/binti) ### [Forward-Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/2ab6678dd001933d) San Francisco, CA · Seattle, WA Hybrid 2mo ago $200,000–$300,000 [Bunkerhill Health](https://nextmove.md/fde/companies/bunkerhill-health) ### [Forward Deployed Engineer](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs/b4cbc34d153bbc31) San Francisco, CA Hybrid 2mo ago $200,000–$300,000 - [Compare senior FDE salary ranges](https://nextmove.md/fde/salary/senior) - [Similar jobs in SF Bay Area](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs?region=sf-bay-area) - [Similar jobs that build what the customer runs](https://nextmove.md/fde/jobs?role=builds-for-customers) Hiring at Wafer and want this page changed or removed? 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