Software Engineer, SpaceXAI
Data Platform
$180-440k
+ Equity
2-5 days a week in office (Palo Alto, CA)
Building artificial intelligence
Open for applications
Building artificial intelligence
1001+ employees
Open for applications
$180-440k
+ Equity
2-5 days a week in office (Palo Alto, CA)
1001+ employees
Company mission
To build AI systems that can help humanity understand the world better.
Role
Who you are
- Proven expertise in distributed systems, stream processing, or large-scale data platforms
- Proficiency in Rust, Go, Scala or similar systems languages
- Hands-on experience with Kafka, Flink, Spark, Trino, or Hadoop*in production
- Strong debugging, profiling, and performance optimization skills
- Track record of shipping and maintaining critical infrastructure
- Comfortable working in fast-moving, high-stakes environments with minimal guardrails
What the job involves
- The Data Platform team at X builds and operates the infrastructure responsible for all large-scale data transport and processing across the company
- We own and manage core systems including Apache Kafka, HDFS, Spark, Flink, and Trino, enabling real-time ML pipelines, feed ranking, experimentation, analytics, and observability at petabyte scale
- Our team deals with latency-critical workloads, high-throughput streaming, and distributed compute systems that require fault tolerance, performance, and absolute reliability
- As a software engineer on the Data Platform team, you will design, build, and operate the distributed systems powering X’s data movement and compute
- You will take ownership of infrastructure components that process trillions of events daily, driving the scalability, performance, and reliability of the systems that power product and ML workloads across the company
- Design and implement high-throughput, low-latency data ingestion and transport systems
- Scale and optimize multi-tenant Kafka infrastructure supporting real-time workloads
- Extend and tune Spark, Flink, and Trino for demanding production pipelines
- Build interfaces, APIs, and pipelines enabling teams to query, process, and move data at petabyte scale
- Debug and optimize distributed systems, with a focus on reliability and performance under load
- Collaborate with ML, product, and infrastructure teams to unblock critical data workflows
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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