Software Engineer – X Data

xAI; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 125,000 - 400,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Equity

Medical insurance

Vision insurance

Dental insurance

401(k) retirement plan

Disability insurance

Life insurance

Employee discounts

Job summary

xAI is seeking a Data Engineer to join its product engineering team in Palo Alto. You will build and operate distributed data platforms powering both real-time and batch pipelines at scale, delivering data products and insights to product, growth, safety, and business teams.

The role requires hands-on expertise in modern data tooling and languages, with a focus on reliability, performance, and cross-functional collaboration.

Qualifications

• 3+ years of professional software engineering experience, ideally in data engineering or distributed systems.
• Hands-on experience with Python, Rust, Scala, Go or Java and data pipeline tooling.
• Experience with real-time and batch data processing tools and distributed storage systems.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate production-grade realtime and batch pipelines that ingest, process, validate, and deliver data powering user-behavior insights and product decisions.
• Create shared datasets, fact tables, and internal data products for analysis and product improvements.
• Prototype and build tooling to automate internal data workflows and self-serve data access.
• Own data correctness end-to-end, validate invariants, reconcile denominators, recompute, and investigate root causes when metrics shift.
• Move across query engines and frameworks (BigQuery, Trino, Clickhouse; Flink, Kafka, Spark/Scalding) as needed.
• Collaborate with product and business teams to identify data gaps and prioritize high-impact data acquisitions.
• Iterate quickly on feedback to ship small, useful increments with reliability.

Skills

Python

Rust

Scala

Go

Java

Data pipelines

Distributed systems

Tools

Spark

Kafka

Flink

SQL

Job description

ABOUT xAI

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:

As a Data Engineer in X product engineering team, you will play a key role in providing comprehensive data solutions that own or serve a wide range of stakeholders, including our end-users and internal teams such as Product engineering, Algorithm, Legal, Finance and Sales. Our work utilizes AI, distributed computing and hybrid storage technologies, but extends beyond purely data-centric solutions, encompassing non-data-related challenges, ultimately maximizing the potential of data for the benefit of our diverse user base.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

You’ll help build and operate a distributed data platform that powers hundreds of realtime and batch pipelines processing billions of events per day. The team runs like an internal startup — we own problems end to end, from raw event streams to the datasets, tooling, and metrics that product, growth, safety, and business teams depend on daily. In this role you will:

• Design, build, and operate production-grade realtime and batch pipelines that ingest, process, validate, and deliver data powering user-behavior insights and product decisions.


• Create shared datasets, fact tables, and internal data products that let other teams analyze, debug, and improve product performance.


• Prototype and build tooling that automates and accelerates internal data workflows — backfills, dashboards, report generation, and self-serve access to data.


• Own data correctness end to end: validate with output invariants, denominator reconciliation, and independent recomputation, and lead root-cause investigations when key metrics move unexpectedly.


• Move fluidly across query engines and frameworks (e.g., BigQuery, Trino, Clickhouse for analytics; Flink, Kafka, Spark/Scalding for streaming and batch), choosing the right tool and adapting quickly to new infrastructure and environments.


• Partner across product and business teams to surface where data gaps exist and prioritize the highest-impact opportunities for new data acquisition and improvement.


• Iterate quickly on feedback, shipping the smallest useful increment with a strong bias toward efficient, accurate, and reliable solutions.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

We are looking for an engineer with 3 years of professional software engineering experience, ideally in data engineering or distributed systems.

• Hands-on expertise in Python, Rust, Scala, Go or Java, and data pipeline toolings and distributed systems.


• Knowledge of realtime and batch data processing tools such as Spark/Kafka/Flink/SQL and various storage systems in RMDBs/NoSQL


• Experience solving large scale problems and comfortable doing incremental quality work while building brand new systems to enable future quality improvements.


• Proven records of interpreting product requirements into engineering implementation plans, and effectively communicating with different groups (AI, product, marketing/sales and engineering).

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

$125,000 – $400,000 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.
xAI is an equal opportunity employer. For details on data processing, view our Recruitment Privacy Notice.