Sr. Software Engineer, ML Platform

Cursor; Palo Alto (CA); On-site; USD 180,000 - 330,000; Full time

Job summary

SpaceXSI is seeking a Sr. Software Engineer, ML Platform in the United States (CA/Palo Alto) to design, build, and operate core platform systems for ML researchers and product engineers.

You will own reliability, performance, and developer experience while partnering with research to move fast on large GPU fleets. The role emphasizes distributed systems expertise, observability, and developer productivity in a high-ownership environment.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of industry experience with production distributed systems.
• Degree in CS/ML or equivalent work experience.

Responsibilities

• Design, build, and operate core platform systems used daily by ML researchers and product engineers.
• Partner closely with research to turn recurring pain into durable infrastructure.
• Own reliability, performance, and developer experience for the systems in your lane.
• Ship iteratively in a flat, high-ownership environment. Measure impact, then raise the bar.

Skills

Distributed systems

ML platforms

Research collaboration

Telemetry / tracing

Observability

GPU scheduling

Education

Bachelor's/Master's/PhD in CS/ML

Job description

SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today, SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of making life multiplanetary and expanding consciousness to the stars.

SpaceXSI is building Super Intelligence to help humanity understand the universe. Our teams are building the full Super Intelligence stack: from our Colossus supercomputers, to Grok models, to our suite of applications, including Grok Bot, Grok Build, Grok Imagine, Grok Voice, and X. We're creating a powerful flywheel where more compute trains better models, better models power more useful products, and what we learn from people using those products shapes what we build next.

SR. SOFTWARE ENGINEER, ML PLATFORM

As a Software Engineer on ML Platform at SpaceXSI, you'll build the infrastructure that turns real product usage into better models, and keeps research moving fast on large GPU fleets. ML Platform is organized into four teams. Depending on your background, you may join any of them. We're looking for strong distributed-systems and infrastructure engineers who want to sit next to research and ship platform primitives that move the product.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Design, build, and operate core platform systems used daily by ML researchers and product engineers
• Partner closely with research to turn recurring pain into durable infrastructure
• Own reliability, performance, and developer experience for the systems in your lane
• Ship iteratively in a flat, high-ownership environment. Measure impact, then raise the bar

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor's, Master's, or PhD in computer science, machine learning, or another quantitative discipline; OR equivalent work experience
• 5+ years of industry experience working with production distributed systems (e.g., infrastructure, ingestion, data pipelines, or scheduling/orchestration, etc.)

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Experience owning production distributed systems at meaningful scale (ingestion, data pipelines, scheduling/orchestration, or similar)
• Experience partnering and building platforms for ML researchers and product engineers
• Thrive where ownership is high and the feedback loop is short
• Telemetry: event ingestion, product analytics pipelines, OpenTelemetry / tracing, reliable data APIs
• Product Data Platform: data frameworks, Spark / Flink / Ray, ML dataset and training-data infrastructure
• Observability: experiment / run monitoring, debug and eval tooling, agent-friendly observability UX
• ML DevX and Systems: GPU / cluster scheduling, job queues, node health, research compute developer experience

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

• We're in-person with cozy offices in North Beach, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Manhattan, New York, complete with well-stocked libraries
• If there appears to be a fit, we'll reach out to schedule 2-3 short technicals. After, we'll schedule an onsite in our office, where you'll work on a small project, discuss ideas, and meet the team

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

Annual Salary:

$180,000 - $330,000 USD

Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience.

Base salary is just one part of our total rewards package at SpaceXSI, 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.