About the role
About Arena Intelligence
Arena is the platform for evaluating how AI models perform in the real world. Founded by researchers from UC Berkeley's SkyLab, we're on a mission to measure and advance the frontier of AI for real-world use, and to build the foundation for everyone to understand, shape, and benefit from it.
Tens of millions of people use Arena each month to evaluate how frontier systems handle the work they actually do. The preferences they share power the most transparent, rigorous, and human-centered evaluations in AI. Leading AI labs, enterprises, and independent researchers rely on our work and open datasets to understand how models behave in real workflows: agentic coding, creative generation, professional productivity, and beyond. We go beyond leaderboards and decompose what human experience reveals about AI, so models advance toward the work people actually do.
We're a team of researchers, academics, builders, and creatives from UC Berkeley, Google, Stanford, and DeepMind. We seek truth, move fast, and value craftsmanship, curiosity, and impact over hierarchy. We're building a company where thoughtful, curious people from all backgrounds can do their best work together, in an office culture that radiates excellence, energy, and focus.
About the Role
Arena Intelligence is seeking a ML Infrastructure Software Engineer to lead the design and development of scalable, high-performance real-time data and API infrastructure. In this role, you’ll architect systems that capture and process large volumes of serving requests in real time, powering the insights that help researchers and developers build the world’s most advanced AI and its applications. Your work will be foundational to how we surface trustworthy, transparent, and timely evaluation signals across the platform. This role is ideal for someone who thrives in fast-moving environments, cares deeply about performance and reliability, and wants to build systems that help the AI community better understand what models are the best for their real-world use cases.
You’ll
Architect and scale high-performance, real-time API and data systems
Design and implement low-latency pipelines to process and analyze large-scale event streams
Ensure reliability through robust data integrity, availability, and consistency mechanisms
Mentor and guide engineers on infrastructure best practices, architecture, and performance tuning
Collaborate cross-functionally with AI researchers, product leaders, and engineers to anticipate evolving infrastructure needs and deliver resilient, extensible systems
You’ll have
5+ years of experience in software engineering, with a focus on infrastructure or large-scale data and ML systems
Deep expertise in distributed systems, stream processing, and scalable backend architecture
Proven ability to design and operate low-latency, high-throughput, and fault-tolerant systems
Strong foundation in systems design, performance tuning, and building reliable, fault-tolerant services
Comfortable in a dynamic, high-ownership, fast-growth environment
Prior experience with PyTorch model development is a plus.
What we offer
We offer competitive compensation and equity aligned to the markets where our team members are based. The base salary range will depend on the candidate’s permanent work location.
Comprehensive health and wellness benefits, including medical, dental, vision, and additional support programs.
The opportunity to work on cutting-edge AI with a small, mission-driven team
A culture that values transparency, trust, and community impact
Come help build the space where anyone can explore and help shape the future of AI.
Arena Intelligence provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. We are committed to a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcome people from all backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.
About Arena
Arena Intelligence is the open platform for evaluating how AI models perform in the real world. Created by researchers from UC Berkeley’s SkyLab, our mission is to measure and advance the frontier of AI for real-world use.
Millions of people use Arena Intelligence each month to explore how frontier systems perform — and we use our community’s feedback to build transparent, rigorous, and human-centered model evaluations. Leading enterprises and AI labs rely on our evaluations to understand real-world reliability, alignment, and impact. Our leaderboards are the gold standard for AI performance — trusted by leaders across the AI community and shaping the global conversation on model reliability and progress.
We’re a team of researchers, engineers, academics, and builders from places like UC Berkeley, Google, Stanford, DeepMind, and Discord. We seek truth, move fast, and value craftsmanship, curiosity, and impact over hierarchy.
We’re building a company where thoughtful, curious people from all backgrounds can do their best work. Everyone on our team is a deep expert in their field — our office radiates excellence, energy, and focus.
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Job details
Location
San Francisco, CA
Funding
Total raised
$250M
Last stage
Series A
Investors
Founders
What happens next.
No applications, no recruiter spam. Just the intro.
Confirm the fit
A few questions to make sure this role is the right shape for you. Two minutes.
I pitch you to the company
I write the intro, send it to the founder, and handle the back-and-forth.
A meeting lands on your calendar
If they’re a yes, I book the chat. You show up — that’s the whole job-hunt.
