Six Figure Work

Sr. Software Engineer, Observability

xAI

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

Base salary $180K  to $330K

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

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  • LocationPalo Alto, CA
  • WorkplaceWorkplace not stated
  • Status at last checkSource accepting applications when checked
  • Last checked (1 h ago) · observed since

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.

SR. SOFTWARE ENGINEER, OBSERVABILITY

The Observability team builds and operates the core infrastructure that enables engineers to monitor, debug, and optimize the performance and reliability of their systems. We handle telemetry at massive scale — billions of time series and petabytes of logs — with strict performance and availability requirements.

You will be part of the small, high-impact team responsible for building and maintaining SpaceXSI's observability platform. You’ll own critical systems that power metrics, logs, tracing, and alerting enabling engineering teams to operate services at scale, identify issues before they impact users, and drive systemic reliability improvements.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

  • Design and implement scalable observability infrastructure for metrics, logging, and tracing
  • Build high-performance telemetry pipelines that handle massive ingestion volumes
  • Develop APIs, query engines, and UIs that allow engineers to get real-time insights into their services
  • Define and enforce best practices for instrumentation, alerting, and reliability across the company
  • Partner with infrastructure and product teams to deeply integrate observability into our internal platforms
  • Own the reliability, scalability, and performance of the observability stack end-to-end

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

  • Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, math, or technical discipline; OR 5+ years of professional software development experience in lieu of a degree
  • Experience with production-level Go, Rust, or Scala

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

  • Experience with Kafka, Redis, or large-scale time series databases
  • Experience operating observability pipelines in Kubernetes or similar orchestration environments
  • Deep understanding of distributed systems and telemetry architecture
  • Experience building and operating infrastructure at scale
  • Familiarity with observability stacks such as Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, VictoriaMetrics, or ClickHouse

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

$180,000 - $330,000 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 ($180,000) is above 50% of the 4,200 Software Engineering roles in California listed on this site; 172 others list the same floor. Their median floor is $176,450; the middle half runs from $149,175 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
Sr. Software Engineer, Observability (this listing)$180K - $330K
Model Engineer, Imagine$180K - $440K
Sr. Software Engineer, Real-Time Storage$180K - $330K
Software Engineer, Consumer Subscriptions$180K - $440K
Sr. Web Engineer (X)$180K - $330K
Software Engineer, Linux Kernel$180K - $440K
Sr. Software Engineer, Platform Infrastructure$180K - $330K

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. Began meeting the published-salary criteria
  3. Advertised base range changed
  4. fields changed
  5. Advertised base range changed
Observed since
Employer-stated posting date
2025-07-29
Where this pay comes from

Location as the employer wrote it: Palo Alto, CA

$180,000 - $330,000 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.