Six Figure Work

Sr. Software Engineer, Search Infrastructure

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 (2 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, SEARCH INFRASTRUCTURE

As a senior backend engineer, you’ll design and build scalable, high-performance systems that power subscriptions infrastructure, new monetized products, user growth, and creator monetization. You’ll work on mission-critical infrastructure that processes millions of transactions, optimizes user acquisition and retention, and enables creators to earn a living through their content. This is a unique opportunity to make a large-scale revenue impact while creating products that users and businesses love.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

  • Design and build large scale search infrastructure (real-time indexing, serving, and data pipelines) that handles massive write and query loads with strict latency and reliability requirements
  • Go deep into search internals (indexing, query execution, and relevance) and help shape the technical direction of the core search infrastructure
  • Operate production services end to end, including monitoring, debugging, incident response, and performance optimization
  • Lead and drive incident responses and recovery with your peers. Review and contribute to incident postmortems and hold a high bar for the same

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

  • 5+ years developing large-scale infrastructure, distributed systems or experience with storage or hardware architecture
  • Experience with high performance Rust, C++ or JVM-based languages

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

  • Experience with operating system internals, filesystems, networking, or database storage engines
  • Hands-on experience with search and indexing technologies (Elasticsearch, Lucene, or similar) and an understanding of how they work and why
  • Obsessed performance, reliability, scalability and quality
  • Ability to take full ownership of problems and learn whatever is needed to solve them
  • Comfortable moving quickly in a fast-paced environment with shifting priorities and tight deadlines
  • Contributions to open-source search or infrastructure projects

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 51% of the 4,297 Software Engineering roles in California listed on this site; 176 others list the same floor. Their median floor is $176,000; the middle half runs from $149,100 to $202,000.

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 7, 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, Search Infrastructure (this listing)$180K - $330K
Sr. Software Engineer, Real-Time Storage$180K - $330K
Sr. Software Engineer, Consumer Subscriptions$180K - $330K
Sr. Web Engineer (X)$180K - $330K
Sr. Software Engineer, Observability$180K - $330K
Sr. Software Engineer, Platform Infrastructure$180K - $330K
Sr. Maching Learning Engineer, Search Ranking$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. fields changed
  3. Began meeting the published-salary criteria
  4. Advertised base range changed
Observed since
Employer-stated posting date
2026-08-06
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.