Modal

Serverless GPU Cloud — Infrastructure for AI/ML Workloads

The consensus on Modal: Choose Modal if you want genuinely hard infrastructure problems, exceptional peers from competitive programming, and meaningful equity — but expect a demanding culture and intense pace.

2021

Founded

San Francisco

Headquarters

~118

Employees

$1.1B

Valuation

Culture Overview

What it's really like to work at Modal

Founded in 2021 by Erik Bernhardsson (ex-Spotify ML engineering, ex-Better.com CTO) and Akshat Bubna (MIT, IOI gold medalist), Modal builds serverless GPU cloud infrastructure from scratch in Rust. The culture is intensely technical, attracting competitive programmers and systems engineers who thrive on hard problems. Engineers design products for engineers — fast feedback loops are the primary engineering value.

Glassdoor Ratings

Modal Glassdoor Ratings & Employee Reviews

3.4

Overall Glassdoor Score

Based on 22 reviews

Culture & Values 3.1

Compensation & Benefits 3.3

Work-Life Balance 3.2

Career Opportunities 3.2

Senior Management 3.0

Overall Rating 3.4

43% Recommend to a Friend

Employee Review Themes

Working at Modal: Pros & Cons

✓ What employees love

✓Technically exceptional peers recruited from competitive programming and top ML labs
✓Genuinely hard infrastructure problems — most companies buy this off the shelf
✓High individual ownership and visible impact at small headcount
✓Strong product reputation in the AI/ML community with major customers like Meta
✓Meaningful equity at a $1.1B+ valuation with strong growth trajectory

✗ What could be better

✗Management style described as demanding — some reviews cite walking on eggshells
✗Culture still maturing at 3.1/5 — low for a startup that relies on retention
✗Work-life balance concerns (3.2/5) — intensity is non-negotiable
✗Only 43% recommend to a friend — product roadmap described as opaque and fast-changing

Engineering Culture

How the engineering team works

Tech Stack

Rust Python gRPC CUDA RDMA

Built From Scratch

Custom container runtime, FUSE-based lazy-loading filesystem, custom scheduler, memory snapshotting, and HTTP/WebSocket stack — all in Rust. No Kubernetes or Docker dependency.

Notable Projects

GPU memory snapshots (10x faster startup), multi-node RDMA GPU clusters, AI agent sandboxes, and Meta Code deployment. Read the blog →

Team Structure

~118 person team with offices in SF, NYC, and Stockholm. Engineers design products for engineers. Customers include Meta, Scale AI, Ramp, Suno, and Lovable.

Open Positions

Join the Modal team

... open positions.

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