Software Engineer (Data Platform)

Location: Palo Alto, California, United States

Salary: $180,000–$440,000 USD annually

Company

xAI develops AI systems designed to understand the universe and support humanity's pursuit of knowledge.

What you will do

• Design and implement high-throughput, low-latency data ingestion and transport systems.
• Scale and optimize multi-tenant Apache Kafka infrastructure for real-time workloads.
• Extend and tune Spark, Flink, and Trino for demanding production pipelines.
• Build interfaces, APIs, and data pipelines for querying, processing, and moving data at petabyte scale.
• Debug and optimize distributed systems for reliability and performance under load.
• Collaborate with ML, product, and infrastructure teams to unblock critical data workflows.

Requirements

• Proven expertise in distributed systems, stream processing, or large-scale data platforms.
• Proficiency in Rust, Go, Scala, or similar systems languages.
• Production experience with Kafka, Flink, Spark, Trino, or Hadoop.
• Strong debugging, profiling, and performance optimization skills.
• Experience shipping and maintaining critical infrastructure.
• Ability to work in fast-moving, high-stakes environments with minimal guardrails.

Culture & Benefits

• Small, highly motivated team with a flat organizational structure.
• Hands-on environment focused on engineering excellence, curiosity, and initiative.
• Equity and comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage.
• 401(k) retirement plan, short- and long-term disability insurance, life insurance, and additional discounts.