ABOUT BASETEN
Baseten powers mission-critical inference for the world's most dynamic AI companies, like Cursor, Notion, OpenEvidence, Abridge, Clay, Gamma and Writer. By uniting applied AI research, flexible infrastructure, and seamless developer tooling, we enable companies operating at the frontier of AI to bring cutting-edge models into production. We're growing quickly and recently raised our $1.5B Series F, led by Altimeter Capital, Conviction Partners, and Spark Capital. Join us and help build the platform engineers turn to to ship AI products.
THE ROLE
As the Head of IT at Baseten, you will build, scale, and secure our internal technology function to support our rapid growth. Reporting to our Chief Information Security Officer, you will lead and mentor a team of 5+ IT engineers, leading the charge to transition Baseten from startup-era IT to a highly automated, enterprise-ready IT organization. You will take full ownership of corporate IT infrastructure, Helpdesk operations, corporate identity management, device lifecycles, and vendor procurement. As we scale to support the world’s most dynamic AI companies, you will ensure our internal systems scale seamlessly with our headcount, providing a secure, frictionless, and world-class technology experience for all Baseten employees.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Team Leadership: Manage, mentor, and grow a team of IT engineers, fostering a high-performance culture focused on technical excellence and end-user satisfaction.
Helpdesk Operational Excellence: Build a fast-response support function by establishing clear response SLAs, tracking employee satisfaction metrics, and formalizing on-call and incident response processes.
Zero-Touch Automation: Architect and implement automated employee onboarding, offboarding, and role-based access changes through deep integrations across HRIS, MDM, and IAM systems.
SaaS Management & Procurement: Establish comprehensive SaaS management processes to eliminate shadow IT, automate access workflows, optimize vendor spend per employee, and build visibility into corporate tools and budgets.
AI-Enabled Workflows: Spearhead the deployment of internal AI tools and automated IT agents—powered by Baseten models—to resolve routine tickets, maintain knowledge bases, and significantly boost internal productivity.
Infrastructure & Hardware Ownership: Manage hardware logistics, global device lifecycles, software license consolidation, and the overarching corporate IT budget.
REQUIREMENTS
Experience: 5+ years of overall IT leadership experience, ideally accompanied by 2+ years of experience as a Head of IT or IT Director at an internet company, scaling developer-focused SaaS or AI infrastructure startups through rapid growth (e.g., 100 to 500+ employees).
Modern Cloud-Native Stack Mastery: Deep, hands-on expertise with Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA), IAM/SSO (Okta, Google Workspace), MDM (Kandji, Jamf), and HRIS integrations (Rippling).
Vendor & Financial Discipline: A proven track record of successful vendor negotiations, complex hardware logistics, software license consolidation, and strict IT budget ownership.
AI-First Mindset: Proactive and forward-thinking approach to leveraging modern AI tooling and automation to eliminate operational friction, rather than relying on manual headcount expansion.
Process Engineering: Demonstrated ability to build enterprise-ready processes from the ground up, establish performance metrics, and drive continuous improvement in a fast-paced environment.
BENEFITS
Competitive compensation, including meaningful equity.
100% coverage of medical, dental, and vision insurance for employee and dependents
Flexible PTO policy including company wide Winter Break (our offices are closed from Christmas Eve to New Year's Day!)
Paid parental leave
Fertility and family-building stipend through Carrot
Company-facilitated 401(k)
Exposure to a variety of ML startups, offering unparalleled learning and networking opportunities.
Apply now to embark on a rewarding journey in shaping the future of AI! If you are a motivated individual with a passion for machine learning and a desire to be part of a collaborative and forward-thinking team, we would love to hear from you.
At Baseten, we are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We provide equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, genetic information, disability, or veteran status.
We are an Equal Opportunity Employer and will consider qualified applicants with criminal histories in a manner consistent with applicable law (by example, the requirements of the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, where applicable).
Skills Required
- 5+ years of IT leadership experience, ideally 2+ years as Head of IT or IT Director at internet/SaaS/AI startups (scaling 100 to 500+ employees).
- Hands-on expertise with Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) and identity/access management (IAM/SSO).
- Experience with Okta and Google Workspace.
- Experience with MDM solutions such as Kandji and Jamf.
- Experience integrating HRIS systems, e.g., Rippling, for onboarding/offboarding and role-based access.
- Proven vendor negotiation experience, hardware logistics, software license consolidation, and IT budget ownership.
- Proven experience leveraging AI tooling and automation to streamline IT workflows and ticket resolution.
- Demonstrated ability to build enterprise-ready processes, establish performance metrics, and drive continuous improvement.
- Experience managing, mentoring, and growing an IT team (5+ engineers).
Baseten Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about Baseten and has not been reviewed or approved by Baseten.
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Fair & Transparent Compensation — Feedback suggests pay targets the top of market with explicit ranges in postings and a stated aim to provide 90th percentile salaries with equity. Role descriptions emphasize competitive, experience-based pay bands and meaningful stock grants.
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Healthcare Strength — Healthcare is described as fully covered for medical, dental, and vision for employees and their families, reducing out-of-pocket costs. This comprehensive coverage is consistently highlighted alongside other core benefits.
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Leave & Time Off Breadth — Time off policies include unlimited PTO with a minimum expectation of at least four weeks, 16 paid company holidays, and a company-wide winter break. These elements indicate substantial protected time away from work.
Baseten Insights
What We Do
AI’s future won’t be a few massive models built by a handful of labs. It’ll be millions of specialized models embedded into every product, workflow, and experience by the people closest to the customer. The foundation of that future is inference. Inference determines the performance, reliability, latency, and economics of every AI product. For AI to scale globally, it must be as reliable, fast, cost-effective, and high-quality as possible. That’s why Baseten exists. Companies like Abridge, Cursor, Lovable, Notion, and OpenEvidence depend on Baseten to power mission-critical AI workloads in production.
Why Work With Us
We’re an interdisciplinary team of researchers, engineers, and operators building the Inference Cloud our AI future demands. We’re running at a hard systems problem that requires first-principles thinking across the entire stack. The bar is high. We work hard, move fast, and care deeply about quality.
