Backend Engineer, SpaceXAI
API
£107-262k
+ Equity
Building artificial intelligence
Open for applications
Building artificial intelligence
1001+ employees
Open for applications
£107-262k
+ Equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To build AI systems that can help humanity understand the world better.
Role
Who you are
- As an ideal candidate you have a good understanding of how highly scalable and reliable production infrastructure is built
- Most of our backend infrastructure is written in Rust. So familiarity with a compiled language such as C++, Rust, or Go is highly beneficial
- Expert knowledge of either Rust or C++
- Experience in designing, implementing, and maintaining reliable and horizontally scalable distributed systems
- Knowledge of service observability and reliability best practices
- Experience in operating commonly used databases such as PostgreSQL, Clickhouse, and MongoDB
Desirable
- Experience with LLM inference engines and serving frameworks (e.g., SGLang, TensorRT, vLLM)
- Experience designing or building with agent SDKs and agent orchestration frameworks
- Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and containerized applications
- Expert knowledge of gRPC (unary, response streaming, bi-directional streaming, REST mapping)
What the job involves
- Build the xAI API that serves our models to developers worldwide
- Own the end-to-end system responsible for high-throughput inference, handling billions of tokens per minute with low latency and high availability, including model serving infrastructure, request routing, SDK development, rate limiting, observability, and efficient scaling
Salary benchmarks
Our take
SpaceXAI, formerly XAI, is Elon Musk's venture into the world of artificial intelligence, and like all things Musk, it's going big. It's setting out to build AI that helps humanity understand the universe, and it's starting with Grok, its conversational AI chatbot already integrated into X (formerly Twitter). With access to real-time data and a powerful ecosystem of Musk-led companies, SpaceXAI is certainly pushing towards artificial general intelligence at serious scale.
Like all bold ventures, SpaceXAI has faced its share of controversy, from questions about regulation to the overlap across Musk's businesses (most recently, XAI became a subsidiary of the Musk-owned SpaceX). But fans are still seeing the bigger picture: an interconnected tech ecosystem where AI, social media, and space exploration feed into one another.
The company made headlines in 2024 with its massive "Colossus" supercomputer project, powered by tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs. While the data center's temporary power setup has faced environmental scrutiny, the scale of ambition is certainly undeniable. From launching tap-to-pay features on X to building one of the most powerful AI training systems on Earth, xAI is moving fast.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Company
Funding (last 2 of 5 rounds)
Jan 2026
$20bn
SERIES E
Jul 2025
$5bn
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Total funding: $37.1bn
Company benefits
- Health and wellness: Comprehensive health insurance including medical, dental, vision, and disability coverage
- Life and family: Life and AD&D insurance and fertility benefits to ensure our team’s well-being and peace of mind
- Flexible vacation: We work hard but avoid burn out. Take time off when you need it
- Visa sponsorship: We support international talent with visa sponsorship to join our team
- 401(k) plan: Retirement savings plan to secure your financial future
Company HQ
Palo Alto, CA
Leadership
Elon Musk
(Founder)Founder, Chairman, CEO, and CTO of SpaceX. CEO and Product Architect of Tesla. Chairman and CTO of X Corp, founder of the Boring Company, co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI, and president of the Musk Foundation.
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