Network Engineer

SpaceXAI; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 150,000 - 250,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Medical insurance

Vision

Dental coverage

401(k) retirement plan

Disability insurance

Life insurance

Discounts and perks

Job summary

SpaceXAI is seeking a Network Engineer to own production network design, deployment, and operations end to end. This hands-on role focuses on datacenter and campus/core networks, with on-call rotation and travel to build sites as needed.

You will qualify platforms, build scalable networks, and drive changes safely while maintaining high availability. Experience with BGP and at least one IGP, plus strong communication skills, are essential.

Qualifications

• Several years designing and/or operating production networks in datacenter, ISP, cloud, or large enterprise environments.
• Solid hands-on experience with BGP and at least one interior routing protocol.
• Working knowledge of TCP/IP, VLANs, EVPN/VXLAN or equivalent datacenter overlays, and optics/high-speed Ethernet.
• Experience troubleshooting live production network incidents and participating in on-call.
• Strong written and verbal communication; clear change docs and incident notes.

Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, and operate production datacenter and campus/core networks at scale.
• Own routing and switching configuration standards (BGP and at least one IGP such as OSPF or IS-IS).
• Qualify new network platforms, optics, and topologies; contribute to architecture and capacity planning.
• Build and improve monitoring, alerting, and operational documentation so issues are caught and fixed quickly.
• Troubleshoot Layer 2/Layer 3 incidents end to end and drive root cause fixes.
• Automate repetitive network tasks with Python, Ansible, or similar tooling where it reduces toil.
• Partner with compute, facilities, and software teams during cluster build-outs and maintenance windows.
• Support high-performance / supercompute network environments (Ethernet AI/HPC fabrics, RoCE/RDMA designs) as part of broader network estate.

Skills

Production network design/ops

BGP experience

IP routing protocols

TCP/IP basics

On-call incident handling

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS/CE or related field

Tools

Arista/Cisco/Juniper hardware

EVPN/VXLAN

Python/Ansible automation

Job description

SpaceXAI’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. 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 employees are expected to have strong communication skills. They should be able to concisely and accurately share knowledge with their teammates.

ABOUT THE ROLE:

SpacexAI is building and operating large-scale networks that underpin training and inference infrastructure, including high-performance / supercompute fabrics that connect GPU clusters, plus the core, edge, and datacenter networks that keep that infrastructure reachable and reliable.

We need a Network Engineer who is strong on fundamentals and comfortable owning production network design, deployment, and operations end to end. This is a hands-on engineering seat — not a NOC technician role and not a network-software (telemetry/ZTP platform) SWE role. You will design and build networks, qualify platforms, ship changes safely, and keep availability and performance high as we scale.

Travel to Memphis (and other build sites) may be required for capacity build-outs. You will participate in a team on-call rotation.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Design, deploy, and operate production datacenter and campus/core networks at scale
• Own routing and switching configuration standards (BGP and at least one IGP such as OSPF or IS-IS), including change design, peer reviews, and execution
• Qualify new network platforms, optics, and topologies; contribute to architecture and capacity planning
• Build and improve monitoring, alerting, and operational documentation so issues are caught and fixed quickly
• Troubleshoot Layer 2/Layer 3 incidents end to end — from link flaps and optics through routing and traffic engineering — and drive root cause and lasting fixes
• Automate repetitive network tasks with Python, Ansible, or similar tooling where it reduces toil
• Partner with compute, facilities, and software teams during cluster build-outs and maintenance windows
• Support high-performance / supercompute network environments (Ethernet AI/HPC fabrics, RoCE/RDMA-capable designs) as part of the broader network estate — deep specialist RoCE/NCCL ownership is a plus, not the bar for this seat

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Several years designing and/or operating production networks in a datacenter, ISP, cloud, or large enterprise environment
• Solid hands-on experience with BGP and at least one interior routing protocol
• Working knowledge of TCP/IP, VLANs, EVPN/VXLAN or equivalent datacenter overlays, and optics / high-speed Ethernet
• Experience troubleshooting live production network incidents and participating in on-call
• Strong written and verbal communication; clear change docs and incident notes

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Experience with modern datacenter vendors (e.g. Arista, Cisco, Juniper, Nvidia/Mellanox)
• Familiarity with high-performance or supercompute networking (RoCEv2, congestion control, GPU cluster fabrics) — useful context for our environment, not a hard filter
• Network automation (Python, Ansible, Terraform, or similar) used in production
• Experience with EVPN, leaf-spine, and large-scale Ethernet fabrics
• Prior work supporting rapid datacenter or cluster capacity build-outs

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Willing to work onsite in Palo Alto

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

$150,000 - $250,000 USD

• equity
• comprehensive medical
• vision
• dental coverage
• access to a 401(k) retirement plan
• short & long-term disability insurance
• life insurance
• various other discounts and perks