Software Engineer, Sandboxing
$300k - $400k • San Francisco • FullTime
Posted 26d ago
Job Location
San Francisco
Tech Stack
Remote Work Policy
On-site
Employment Type
FullTime
Categories
AI Agent Engineer
About the job
Thinking Machines is building AI that extends human will and judgment, and our Core Services team is responsible for the foundational infrastructure that enables models to run code, use tools, and take actions safely and reliably. This role involves designing, building, and operating a sandboxing platform where models can execute untrusted code and interact with tools. This is critical infrastructure that supports both internal research and external product development, requiring a focus on speed, security, and dependability.
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and operate sandboxed execution environments for running untrusted, model-generated code and tool calls at scale.
- Improve isolation boundaries using technologies such as containers, microVMs, or gVisor-style kernels, balancing security against startup latency and throughput.
- Build scheduling, resource-management, and lifecycle systems for efficient sandbox provisioning and management under heavy concurrent load.
- Partner with researchers and product teams to create user-friendly and secure sandboxing primitives.
- Instrument sandboxes for observability and abuse detection, and respond to security threats.
- Own the end-to-end reliability and performance of the sandboxing platform.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in computer science, engineering, or similar.
- Proficiency in at least one backend language (Python or Rust).
- Experience building or operating isolation or virtualization technology (e.g., containers, microVMs, gVisor, Kata Containers).
- Solid understanding of Linux internals relevant to isolation (namespaces, cgroups, seccomp, capabilities, networking).
- Comfort operating across the full technology stack and owning projects end-to-end.
- Ability to thrive in a highly collaborative, cross-functional environment.
- Experience securing systems that execute untrusted or adversarial code.
- Familiarity with running large-scale, multi-tenant infrastructure on Kubernetes or similar orchestration systems.
- Experience with performance-sensitive systems programming and reducing cold-start latency.
- Track record of contributing to open-source infrastructure or security tooling.
Benefits
- Generous health, dental, and vision benefits
- Unlimited PTO
- Paid parental leave
- Relocation support