# Forward Deployed Engineer - ML at Modal

- Company: Modal
- What the company does: Bring your own code, and run CPU, GPU, and data-intensive compute at scale. The serverless platform for AI and data teams. Backed by Accel, General Catalyst and AI Grant.
- Company website: https://modal.com/
- Type: Startups (AI role)
- Level: Mid level
- Location: New York
- Work setup: On-site
- Pay: $180K to $250K base salary per year (USD)
- Posted: 2026-02-23
- Apply by: 2026-10-08
- Apply: https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/modal/9fadb51f-ce11-41b1-84d5-470e66cc8ee9
- Page: https://www.1752.vc/careers/jobs/modal-forward-deployed-engineer-ml/

## About the role

We're looking for Forward Deployed ML Engineers who want to work at the intersection of deep technical work and direct customer impact. As an ML FDE, you'll partner with leading AI companies and foundation model labs to help them achieve state-of-the-art performance on their most demanding workloads — LLM serving, model training (SFT, RLHF), audio pipelines, scientific computing, and more. You're helping teams reach outcomes most engineers can't on their own.

## What they're looking for

- 2+ years of professional ML engineering experience, ideally with hands-on work in inference optimization, model training, GPU programming, or ML infrastructure
- Familiarity with the serving (e.g., vLLM, SGLang) and training (e.g., slime, verl, TRL) toolchains. You don't need all of these, but you should be able to go deep on at least one
- Strong communicator who can go deep on technical architecture with an engineering team and clearly articulate tradeoffs to technical leadership
- Genuine interest in working directly with customers — you find it energizing to understand someone else's problem and help them solve it
- Bonus: side projects, open-source contributions, or published work you're proud of in ML or systems performance
- Willing to work in-person in New York City, San Francisco, or Stockholm

Tags: Engineering