OT Network Engineer (Physical Infrastructure)

Location: Southaven, Mississippi; Memphis, Tennessee. On-site physical infrastructure work is required, including site deployment, network cutovers, commissioning, job walks, work at heights, and work in tight quarters. Extended hours, weekends, after-hours on-call rotation, 24x7 emergency support, and up to 20% travel to other sites worldwide may be required, including potential time at sea.

Company

xAI is building a full superintelligence stack spanning Colossus supercomputers, Grok models, and applications including Grok Bot, Grok Build, Grok Imagine, Grok Voice, and X.

What you will do

• Design, implement, and maintain highly available Layer 2 and Layer 3 networks for production, launch, data center, site, and critical facility environments.
• Design and validate resilient, scalable multi-site OT network topologies, including routing, redundancy, network segmentation, zero-trust firewalls, IP/VLAN schemes, and data flow diagrams.
• Evaluate, procure, deploy, and maintain switches, firewalls, multiplexing, SD-WAN appliances, and other network hardware.
• Improve network automation tooling with configuration analysis, linting, scalability, GitOps, and Infrastructure as Code practices.
• Troubleshoot network issues, perform root cause analysis, maintain documentation, and improve monitoring and operational telemetry.
• Coordinate outage windows, support launch and test campaigns, perform on-site deployments and cutovers, and collaborate with infrastructure, enterprise, customer, vendor, and contractor teams.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, or another STEM discipline and 3+ years of professional network engineering experience, or 5+ years of professional network engineering experience in lieu of a degree.
• 2+ years of hands-on experience in OT networking, critical facility infrastructure, industrial automation, or controls engineering.
• Extensive hands-on experience designing, deploying, supporting, and troubleshooting Layer 2 and Layer 3 networks in latency-sensitive and/or industrial environments.
• Functional experience with multiple network vendors in production or lab environments.
• Experience using and contributing to GitOps and Infrastructure as Code frameworks.
• Ability to work in tight quarters, at heights, and to lift 30 lbs; an active valid driver’s license is required.
• Availability for extended hours, weekends, 24x7 emergency support, and an after-hours on-call rotation; willingness to travel up to 20% and potentially support marine systems at sea.

Nice to have

• Strong understanding of the OSI model and network standards.
• Hands-on experience with Cisco, Arista, and Juniper data center switches.
• Experience with WDM and fiber optics infrastructure, enterprise and media protocols, port security, network segmentation, QoS, multicast, and redundancy protocols.
• Familiarity with network monitoring and Layer 1 testing tools.
• Proficiency in Bash, PowerShell, or Python and automation frameworks such as Terraform and Ansible.
• Professional or lab experience administering Linux and Windows systems.
• CCNA, CCNP, or other industry-standard certifications.
• Experience supporting real-time systems, industrial control networks, or OT environments in aerospace, defense, energy, oil and gas, or similar high-reliability industries.
• Excellent communication skills with internal and external customers, vendors, and management.

Culture & Benefits

• Work in an intense, high-flux environment with a strong focus on urgency and operational excellence.
• Collaborate across physical infrastructure, enterprise, infrastructure, customer, vendor, and contractor teams.
• Support mission-critical supercomputer, launch, test, and critical facility operations.
• Operate under industry and cybersecurity standards including ITAR, ISO, and NIST, with emphasis on network segmentation and security.