Software Engineer - Data

xAI; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 240,000 - 280,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage

401(k) retirement plan

Short & long-term disability insurance

Life insurance

Various discounts and perks

Job summary

xAI is seeking a Software Engineer for the Data team in Palo Alto, CA. You will develop applications that support data acquisition and training for AI systems. Your expertise will help build a reliable data pipeline to enhance model performance. The role requires strong software engineering skills and proficiency in programming languages like Python and experience with tools such as Kubernetes. The annual salary range is $240,000 - $280,000, including comprehensive benefits and equity options.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in relevant technical field or 2+ years of experience in software.
• 1+ years in application development or data engineering.

Responsibilities

• Develop a reliable and scalable enterprise data platform for model training.
• Create features to improve data quality and model performance.
• Collaborate on architecture and design reviews.
• Build prototypes to test key design concepts.
• Own the software engineering and product development details.

Skills

Programming experience in Python

Hands-on experience with Kubernetes

Experience with relational and non-relational databases

Good understanding of statistics

Good understanding of machine learning algorithms

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, engineering, math, physics, or similar

Tools

Ray

Grafana

Superset

Job description

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. 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:

At xAI, we are building AI systems that push the frontier of human knowledge and scientific discovery. High‑quality data is fundamental to every stage of that mission. Our Data team is responsible for ensuring that the models are trained on the right data, in the right form, at the right quality, across every phase of the training lifecycle. This includes partnering closely with acquisition teams to identify where valuable data can be sourced, determining what data is needed to improve model performance, and building the production pipelines and systems that transform raw inputs into high‑quality training data at scale. We work at the intersection of software, data, infrastructure, and machine learning to ensure our models train effectively and reliably.

As a Software Engineer on xAI’s Data team, you will be responsible for developing applications that power data acquisition, preparation, training, quality evaluation, and delivery for model training. You will provide the ability to run training in a reliable, scalable and repeatable manner. You will also provide visibility on training status and data lineage. You will work closely with acquisition teams, ML engineers, and data engineers to build a reliable data pipeline to run training at scale. The ideal candidate combines strong software engineering fundamentals and excellent coding practices.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Develop a highly reliable and scalable enterprise data platform to orchestrate data acquisition, preparation, training, quality evaluation, and delivery for model training
• Create new features such as data lineage, visibility, and monitoring for end‑to‑end training that improve the quality of the data and model performance
• Collaborate with peers on architecture, design, and code reviews
• Build prototypes to prove out key design concepts and quantify technical constraints
• Own all aspects of software engineering and product development
• Deep dive into business problems, find efficient solutions and apply first principles thinking

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, engineering, math, physics, or scientific discipline; OR 2+ years of professional experience building software in lieu of a degree; 1+ years of experience in application development, software engineering, data engineering, or data science

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Programming experience in Python, Rust, Java, C#, Scala, Go or similar languages
• Hands‑on experience with Kubernetes and containerized deployments
• Experience with Ray, AI training and orchestration
• Experience with relational and non‑relational databases, data lakes e.g. PostgreSQL, Iceberg, Clickhouse, or similar
• Experience with data exploration tools like Grafana, Superset, or similar
• Good understanding of version control, testing, continuous integration, build, deployment and monitoring
• Good understanding of statistics, machine learning algorithms and frameworks

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

Annual Salary Range: $240,000 - $280,000 USD

Base salary is just one part of our total rewards package at xAI, which also includes equity, comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short & long‑term disability insurance, life insurance, and various other discounts and perks.