Inference engineering and the real-world deployment of LLMs, with Philip Kiely

Inference engineering and the real-world deployment of LLMs, with Philip Kiely

From Complex Systems with Patrick McKenzie (patio11) by Patrick McKenzie

March 12, 2026 · 1h 24m · Episode 82

About this episode

Patrick McKenzie and Philip Kiely discuss the inference stack and the real-world deployment of LLMs.

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) and Philip Kiely, early employee at Baseten, discuss the inference stack: the critical layer of software and hardware that sits between a model’s weights and a user’s prompt. They cover inference engineering, how intermediate layers are evolving over a technical stack that is changing every six months, and how sophisticated organizations are actually consuming LLMs beyond just writing their questions into chatbot apps. – Full transcript available here: www.complexsystemspodcast.com/inference-engineering-with-philip-kiely/ – Presenting Sponsors: Mercury , Meter, & Granola Complex Systems is presented by Mercury —radically better banking for founders. Mercury offers the best wire experience anywhere: fast, reliable, and free for domestic U.S. wires, so you can stay focused on growing your business. Apply online in minutes at mercury.com . Networking infrastructure has a way of accumulating technical debt faster than almost anything else in IT. Meter handles the full stack (wired, wireless, and cellular) as a single integrated solution: designed, deployed, and managed end-to-end so there's only one vendor to call when something goes wrong. Visit…

People in this episode

Host: Patrick McKenzie

Guest: Philip Kiely

Topics covered

  • inference engineering
  • LLMs
  • technical stack
  • software deployment
  • business applications

Keywords

  • inference stack
  • LLMs
  • software engineering
  • technical debt
  • business growth

Sponsors

Mercury, Meter, Granola

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Baseten

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