Infrastructure Engineering, xAI
Traffic
$180-440k
+ Equity
Building artificial intelligence
Be an early applicant
Building artificial intelligence
1001+ employees
Be an early applicant
$180-440k
+ Equity
1001+ employees
Company mission
To build AI systems that can help humanity understand the world better.
Role
Who you are
- Work ethic and strong prioritization skills are important
- All engineers are expected to have strong communication skills
- They should be able to concisely and accurately share knowledge with their teammates
- This role demands deep technical expertise in Kubernetes, L4/L7 proxies like Envoy, and service discovery systems, along with a proactive approach to debugging and optimizing complex network performance issues from L3 to L7
- 2+ years of experience operating Kubernetes clusters, or experience writing + deploying controllers
- 2+ years of experience configuring and deploying Envoy, NGINX, HAProxy, or some other L7 software load balancer
- 1+ years of experience deploying and configuring kubernetes CNI plugins (Calico, Cilium, Flannel) or experience with IPAM
- 1+ years of experience with DNS systems (ex: CoreDNS, Unbound) or service discovery control planes (xDS)
- 1+ years of experience with cloud networking primitives (VPC Route Tables, Cloud NAT, Peering / Transit Gateways, CDN, Cloudflare Workers or equivalent)
- Experience with host level network proxies (iptables, nftables, IPVS, eBPF programs) is a plus
- Deep experience with gRPC Client libraries (grpcio / grpc-go / grpc-java) is a plus
- Experience with service mesh (Istio, Linkerd) is a plus
- Demonstrated experience in working with Kubernetes and Envoy internals – can you tell us how k8s cached clients work? Can you tell us how Envoy scales and manages state?
- Demonstrated experience debugging performance and reliability issues that span from L3 to L7
- Ex: how would a gRPC client in a cloud environment call a gRPC server in an on-prem server?
- Describe the entire network path and any issues to watch out for, including Service Discovery / DNS, gRPC channel management, egress proxies, VPC routing, peering/PNI, edge caching / CDN, L4 loadbalancing devices, host networking + virtualization, k8s networking, L7 routing, TLS / authnz, TCP/IP
What the job involves
- All employees are expected to be hands-on and to contribute directly to the company’s mission
- In this role, you will be a key contributor to xAI’s Supercomputing team, focusing on building and optimizing scalable, high-performance traffic platforms that power our production inference engines
- You will work on critical systems that manage traffic flow, service discovery, and network reliability across both on-premise and cloud-based Kubernetes clusters
- Collaborating closely with Network Fabric Engineers and other technical teams, you will drive projects that enhance the stability and efficiency of our AI infrastructure, including support for large-scale training runs for advanced models like Grok 4 and beyond
- Build and optimize traffic platforms that automate and simplify the lifecycle of production inference engines across dozens of on-premise and cloud clusters, managing core traffic primitives like load balancing, routing, overload control, authentication / authorization, encryption in transit
- Manage, extend, and optimize xAI’s production inference capabilities with L4/L7 proxies such as Envoy, NGINX
- Manage and extend xAI’s Service Discovery systems, both in and outside of kubernetes (DNS, xDS control planes)
- Collaborate with Network Fabric Engineers to improve host networking + fabric stability for large scale training runs (ie Grok 4 and beyond)
- Work with a fast, small technical team to execute projects in the critical path of xAI
- Tech Stack:
- Kubernetes
- Envoy / xDS
- Golang and Rust
Application process
- Application Review: Submit your CV and a statement of exceptional work. Our team will review your application to assess fit
- Phone Interview (45 minutes): A brief conversation with a team member to discuss your background, key accomplishments, and motivation
- Main Interview Process
- 2 Coding Assessments: Solve problems in a language of your choice
- Systems Hands-On: Demonstrate practical skills in a live problem-solving session
- Project Deep-Dive: Present your past exceptional work to a small audience
Our take
xAI is Elon Musk's venture into the world of artificial intelligence, and like all things Musk, it's going big. Its setting out to build AI that helps humanity understand the universe and its 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, xAI is certainly pushing towards artificial general intelligence at serious scale.
Like all bold ventures, xAI has faced its share of controversy, from questions about regulation to the overlap across Musk's businesses. But fans are still seeing the bigger picture: an interconnected tech ecosystem where AI, social media, and space exploration feed into one another.
Recently, the company made headlines 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 4 rounds)
Jul 2025
$5bn
GROWTH EQUITY VC
Dec 2024
$6bn
SERIES C
Total funding: $17.1bn
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
Downtown, Burlingame, 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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