Six Figure Work

Software Engineer, Training/Inference (C++)

xAI

Company websitex.ai (xAI, opens in new tab)

Base salary $160K  to $250K

Employer-published annual base salary, USD. Advertised base range in Palo Alto, CA +1 more

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  • LocationPalo Alto, CA +1 more
  • WorkplaceWorkplace not stated
  • Status at last checkSource accepting applications when checked
  • Last checked (3 h ago) · observed since
All places named
  • Palo Alto, CA
  • Seattle, WA

About this job

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.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER, TRAINING/INFERENCE (C++)

At SpaceXSI we are building the high-performance inference platform that serves Grok to millions of users every day. As a Software Engineer, Training/Inference (C++), you will design and optimize large-scale model serving systems end-to-end. You will own everything from distributed infrastructure – global KV cache, continuous batching, load balancing, auto-scaling – to deep low-level optimizations, including GPU kernels, quantization, speculative decoding, and tail latency. This is a high-impact role where your work directly determines how fast and reliably users interact with Grok at massive scale.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

  • Architect and implement scalable distributed infrastructure for model serving (load balancing, auto-scaling, batch scheduling, global KV cache)
  • Optimize latency and throughput of model inference under real production workloads
  • Build and operate high-concurrency serving systems with excellent tail latency and high reliability at the scale required to serve millions of users
  • Benchmark, fine-tune, and accelerate inference engines (including low-level GPU kernel work and code generation)
  • Develop custom tools to trace, replay, and fix issues across the full stack — from orchestration down to GPU kernels
  • Create robust CI/CD infrastructure for seamless endpoint deployment, image publishing, and inference engine updates
  • Accelerate research on scaling test-time compute, RL rollout, and model-hardware co-design for next-generation systems

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

  • Bachelor’s degree in computer science, computer engineering, or science discipline
  • 1+ years of experience with low-level system programming experience in C/C++ or Rust

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

  • Experience with large-scale, high-concurrent production serving
  • Experience with GPU inference engines (e.g., vLLM, SGLang, Triton, TensorRT-LLM)
  • Strong background in system optimizations: batching, caching, load balancing, parallelism
  • Low-level inference optimizations: GPU kernels, code generation
  • Algorithmic inference optimizations: quantization, speculative decoding, distillation, low-precision numerics
  • Experience with testing, benchmarking, and reliability of inference services
  • Experience designing and implementing CI/CD infrastructure for inference

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

$160,000 - $250,000 USD

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.

SpaceXSI is an equal opportunity employer. For details on data processing, view our Recruitment Privacy Notice.

Source: xAI on Greenhouse · View original posting (opens in new tab)

Pay in context

This role's base floor ($160,000) is above 34% of the 4,209 Software Engineering roles in California listed on this site; 102 others list the same floor. Their median floor is $176,500; the middle half runs from $149,200 to $204,000.

Only jobs on this site count, and each one publishes a base salary of $100,000 or more, so this compares six-figure jobs with each other, not with the whole market. Computed Nov 6, 2026.

This range next to 6 other live xAI roles with the nearest advertised base floor
Chart as a table
This range next to 6 other live xAI roles with the nearest advertised base floor
RolePublished base
Software Engineer, Training/Inference (C++) (this listing)$160K - $250K
Software Engineer, Kernels/CUDA (C++)$160K - $250K
IT Systems Engineer$162K - $226K
Sr. Security Engineer, GRC Fintech & Financial Services$152K - $258K
Software Engineer, Ads Product$150K - $350K
Mobile Android Engineer$150K - $280K
Model Engineer, Voice$150K - $450K

Same $100K to $400K scale as every card. All xAI roles · How to read the bar

Observed changes

  1. First observed on the employer's board
  2. fields changed
  3. Began meeting the published-salary criteria
  4. Advertised base range changed
  5. Advertised base range changed
Observed since
Employer-stated posting date
2024-10-05
Where this pay comes from

Location as the employer wrote it: Palo Alto, CA; Seattle, WA

$160,000 - $250,000 USD

Method
Employer text, read with fixed rules and re-verified
Checked
Rule set
us-base-v2

The pay passage appears in the employer's own job text. Fixed, deterministic rules located it, and the passage below was checked against the stored copy of the posting.

What we verified

  • The pay figures come from the employer's own listing, quoted exactly above.
  • The pay is an annual base salary in US dollars with a minimum of at least $100,000.
  • The role was publicly listed on the employer's job board when last checked.

We do not verify what the employer will actually offer, whether the employer is still recruiting for the role, or anything beyond what the employer published. Full methodology.