Jobs / United States / Sambanova Systems INC
Director of Engineering - Inference Platform
Sambanova Systems INC · 🇺🇸 San Jose, California, United States
Sponsorship verdict
Sponsorship possible
One solid signal, not two — worth applying, and worth asking about sponsorship early.
- Employer is on a government sponsor recordThe US Department of Labor certified 23 H-1B/E-3 labor condition applications for this employer between Oct 2025 and Jun 2026 (latest Jun 2026) — the step every H-1B hire needs first. USCIS also records 4 H-1B approvals in FY2023. Source: LCA disclosure data (US Department of Labor (OFLC)).
- The posting doesn’t mention sponsorshipSilence isn’t a refusal — ask the recruiter before investing much time.
- No salary bar for this routeH-1B has no fixed salary bar: the employer must pay at least the prevailing wage for the role and area. Cap-subject employers enter a lottery weighted by wage level. Source: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/29/2025-23853/weighted-selection-process-for-registrants-and-petitioners-seeking-to-file-cap-subject-h-1b, rules effective 2026-02-27.
- What Sambanova Systems INC paid sponsored hires in similar roles1 certified filing for “Director, Engineering” (Architectural and Engineering Managers) in CA: $249k–$249k, median $249k. Most were filed at wage level III (100%) — 3 lottery entries, ≈46% projected selection odds for cap-subject employers. Source: US Department of Labor LCA disclosure data (Oct 2025 – Jun 2026).
- Confirmed live todayWhen a source last listed this job as open.
US H-1B: cap-subject employers enter a lottery weighted by wage level — Level I gets 1 entry, Level IV gets 4 (DHS projected selection odds ≈15% at Level I to ≈61% at Level IV). Universities and non-profit research employers are cap-exempt. The $100,000 fee for new petitions from abroad is currently blocked by a court order (appeal pending).
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Sponsor Radar — Sambanova Systems INC
The US Department of Labor certified 23 H-1B/E-3 labor condition applications for this employer between Oct 2025 and Jun 2026 (latest Jun 2026) — the step every H-1B hire needs first. USCIS also records 4 H-1B approvals in FY2023. Source: LCA disclosure data (US Department of Labor (OFLC)).
Past sponsorship or register membership never guarantees sponsorship for this vacancy or for you. Full Sponsor Radar for Sambanova Systems INC →
About the role
SambaNova is a leader in next-generation AI infrastructure, delivering a full-stack inference platform for customers worldwide. At the core of SambaNova's technology is the RDU (Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit) — a chip built on a dataflow architecture rather than the traditional GPU model. Its decode performance is especially strong for agentic workloads like multi-turn agents, code generation, and long-running applications. RDUs are packaged into SambaRack, rack-scale hardware that lets customers deploy state-of-the-art models with better performance, greater energy efficiency, and faster time to value. About the team The SambaStack team builds the inference serving platform enterprises and service providers use to host foundation models on RDU hardware. The platform is cloud-agnostic, and the team owns deployment, orchestration, scaling, and reliability for production inference workloads. About the Role The SambaStack team is seeking an Engineering Director to lead a software engineering team while remaining a hands-on technical contributor. You'll own the growth and effectiveness of your team, the technical quality of their output, and the roadmap for the inference serving platform. You'll continue to design systems and write code on the platform's hardest problems. Responsibilities People & Team Leadership • Lead, grow, and inspire a software team, fostering a culture of technical excellence, collaboration, and continuous improvement • Own hiring for your team: define roles, assess candidates, and build a diverse, high-performing engineering organization • Drive the career development of your engineers through regular 1:1s, meaningful feedback, and clear growth plans • Set clear goals and expectations, track team progress, and remove blockers to keep the team executing effectively • Partner with Product, ML, QA, and DevOps leadership to align team priorities with broader organizational objectives Technical Contribution • Contribute directly as a software engineer: designing systems, writing code, and leading implementation on critical platform initiatives • Participate in and lead design reviews, providing authoritative technical guidance on major features and cross-cutting changes • Establish and uphold engineering standards, best practices, and coding quality across the team • Proactively identify and drive the resolution of systemic risks: performance bottlenecks, reliability gaps, and scaling constraints • Stay current on emerging technologies and AI inference trends to inform the team's technical direction Required Qualifications • 12+ years of software engineering experience, including 2+ years leading and managing engineering teams • Demonstrated ability to manage, develop, and hire strong engineers while remaining a hands-on technical contributor • Strong technical depth in backend systems built with Python, Go, or Rust • Experience with AI inference serving, orchestration, and the infrastructure challenges of LLM workloads at production scale • Proven ability to drive engineering excellence across an engineering team • Excellent communication skills: able to work effectively with engineers, cross-functional partners, and senior leadership • Experience running iterative engineering processes in a fast-paced environment Preferred Qualifications • Experience with Kubernetes ecosystem tooling, including Operators and Helm Charts • Background in ML application optimization and productionization • Experience building or managing teams that deliver cloud-native platforms for enterprise customers • Familiarity with AI coding assistants and the developer tooling ecosystem • Experience at a high-growth AI infrastructure company Base Salary Range: Base Pay Range $245,000 — $325,000 USD Submission