Software Engineer, Ads Product (AI)

Location: Palo Alto, California, United States

Salary: $150,000–$350,000 USD per year, plus equity and benefits.

Company

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

What you will do

• Build and ship product features across the X Ads Platform.
• Develop systems for ad delivery, targeting, optimization, measurement, and advertiser experience.
• Use AI capabilities and modern infrastructure to improve advertising product performance and quality.
• Contribute to reliable, fast, and scalable distributed systems.
• Collaborate with engineers, product leads, and cross-functional partners to turn ideas into working products.
• Debug, maintain, and improve production systems serving real users and driving business impact.

Requirements

• Strong software engineering fundamentals and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to write clean, maintainable code and learn new codebases quickly.
• Experience building software through internships, projects, research, open-source work, startups, or full-time roles.
• Interest in backend systems, distributed systems, data pipelines, product engineering, or AI applications.
• Strong ownership, communication, prioritization, and execution skills.
• Early-career profile with the ability to learn quickly, ship effectively, and take responsibility for meaningful product areas.

Nice to have

• Experience with advertising, recommendations, search, ranking, marketplaces, payments, analytics, or growth systems.
• Experience with large-scale backend systems or data-processing pipelines.
• Experience with React, Golang, Python, Rust, gRPC, Java, or Scala.
• Experience with machine learning, LLMs, experimentation, ranking, or optimization systems.
• Prior startup, research, internship, or high-impact project experience.

Culture & Benefits

• Small, highly motivated team focused on engineering excellence.
• Flat organizational structure with hands-on contribution expected from all employees.
• Equity and comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage.
• 401(k) retirement plan, disability insurance, life insurance, discounts, and other perks.