Software Engineer, Sandboxing
Thinking Machines Lab3 hours ago
Base Salary
$300k - $350k/yr
Responsibilities
- Design, build, and operate sandboxed execution environments for untrusted model-generated code and tool calls at scale.
- Improve isolation boundaries using containers, microVMs, and gVisor-style kernels while balancing security, startup latency, and throughput.
- Build scheduling, resource-management, provisioning, reuse, and teardown systems for high-concurrency sandbox workloads.
- Partner with researchers and the Tinker product team to expose safe, usable sandboxing primitives.
- Instrument sandboxes for observability and abuse detection and respond to escape or exploitation attempts.
- Own the platform’s reliability and performance from API design through the underlying virtualization layer.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in computer science, engineering, or a similar field.
- Proficiency in at least one backend language, specifically Python or Rust.
- Experience building or operating isolation or virtualization technology such as containers, microVMs, or sandboxed runtimes.
- Strong knowledge of Linux isolation internals, including namespaces, cgroups, seccomp, capabilities, and networking.
- Ability to work across the stack and own projects end-to-end.
- Experience securing systems that execute untrusted or adversarial code, including threat modeling and sandbox-escape hardening is preferred.
- Familiarity with large-scale, multi-tenant infrastructure on Kubernetes or similar orchestration systems is preferred.
- Experience with performance-sensitive systems programming and reducing cold-start latency for ephemeral compute is preferred.
- A track record of contributing to open-source infrastructure or security tooling is preferred.
- Interest in how AI agents use tools and code execution is preferred.
Benefits
- Annual salary range of $300,000-$350,000 USD.
- Generous health, dental, and vision benefits.
- Unlimited PTO.
- Paid parental leave.
- Relocation support as needed.
- Based in San Francisco, California.
- Visa sponsorship is offered with a commitment to work through the visa process together, although success is not guaranteed for every candidate or role.
Tech Stack
Categories
About Thinking Machines Lab
Thinking Machines Lab develops AI and generative AI software and conducts applied research to help organizations make data-driven decisions. The company builds products and data science solutions for enterprise use cases, pairing foundational models with practical tooling and services across industries. It is privately held and headquartered in San Francisco.