Sr. Software Engineer, Training/Inference (C++)
Company websitex.ai (xAI, opens in new tab)
Base salary $220K to $357K
Employer-published annual base salary, USD. Advertised base range in Palo Alto, CA
You apply on the employer's own site. Six Figure Work does not handle applications.
- 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, 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
- 5+ 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:
$220,000 - $357,000 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 ($220,000) is above 79% of the 4,280 Software Engineering roles in California listed on this site; 75 others list the same floor. Their median floor is $176,362; the middle half runs from $149,100 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 listingSr. Software Engineer, Training/Inference (C++)$220K to $357K
Corporate Counsel$220K to $260K
Sr. Model Engineer, Multimodal Understanding$220K to $357K
Sr. Software Engineer, Kernels/CUDA (C++)$220K to $357K
Product Counsel$230K to $275K
Director, Global Growth Marketing & Sales Enablement$200K to $280K
Sr. Commercial Counsel, Enterprise$200K to $250K
Chart as a table
| Role | Published base |
|---|---|
| Sr. Software Engineer, Training/Inference (C++) (this listing) | $220K - $357K |
| Corporate Counsel | $220K - $260K |
| Sr. Model Engineer, Multimodal Understanding | $220K - $357K |
| Sr. Software Engineer, Kernels/CUDA (C++) | $220K - $357K |
| Product Counsel | $230K - $275K |
| Director, Global Growth Marketing & Sales Enablement | $200K - $280K |
| Sr. Commercial Counsel, Enterprise | $200K - $250K |
Observed changes
- First observed on the employer's board
- Began meeting the published-salary criteria
- Observed since
- Employer-stated posting date
- 2026-11-06
Where this pay comes from
Location as the employer wrote it: Palo Alto, CA
$220,000 - $357,000 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.
