Compensation Overview

About xAI

xAI’s mission is to create AI systems that can accurately understand the universe and aid humanity in its pursuit of knowledge.

Our team is small, highly motivated, and focused on engineering excellence. This organization is for individuals who appreciate challenging themselves and thrive on curiosity. Engineers are encouraged to work across multiple areas of the company, and as a result, all engineers and researchers share the title "Member of Technical Staff."

We operate with a flat organizational structure. All employees are expected to be hands-on and to contribute directly to the company’s mission. Leadership is given to those who show initiative and consistently deliver excellence. Work ethic and strong prioritization skills are important.

All engineers and researchers are expected to have strong communication skills. They should be able to concisely and accurately share knowledge with their teammates.

xAI does not have recruiters. Every application is reviewed directly by a technical member of the team.

Tech Stack

• Kubernetes
• Pulumi
• Rust and Go
• Flux / ArgoCD

Location

The role is based in the Bay Area [San Francisco and Palo Alto]. Candidates are expected to be located near the Bay Area or open to relocation.

Focus

• Operating some of the world’s largest GPU supercomputing clusters for both AI training and serving production models.
• Implement IaC best practices, enhancing deployment pipelines, and ensuring robust, secure service delivery across our production environments.
• Working with both on-premise clusters and cloud providers.
• Help with security best practices for internal researchers and live external traffic.

Ideal Experiences

• Writing scalable and highly available containerized applications in Rust.
• Managing compute fleets with Pulumi, Terraform, Ansible, or other stateful automation libraries.

Interview Process

After submitting your application, the team reviews your CV and statement of exceptional work. If your application passes this stage, you will be invited to an initial interview (45 minutes - 1 hour) during which a member of our team will ask some basic questions. If you clear the initial phone interview, you will enter the main process, which consists of four technical interviews:

1. Coding assessment in a language of your choice.
2. Systems design: Translate high-level requirements into a scalable, fault-tolerant service.
3. Systems hands-on: Demonstrate practical skills in a live problem-solving session.
4. Project deep-dive: Present your past exceptional work to a small audience.
5. Meet and greet with the wider team.

Our goal is to finish the main process within one week. We don’t rely on recruiters for assessments. Every application is reviewed by a member of our technical team. All interviews will be conducted via Google Meet.

Annual Salary Range

$180,000 - $370,000 USD