xAI’s mission is to create AI systems that can accurately understand the universe and aid humanity in its pursuit of knowledge. Our team is small, highly motivated, and focused on engineering excellence. This organization is for individuals who appreciate challenging themselves and thrive on curiosity. We operate with a flat organizational structure. All employees are expected to be hands-on and to contribute directly to the company’s mission. Leadership is given to those who show initiative and consistently deliver excellence. Work ethic and strong prioritization skills are important. All engineers are expected to have strong communication skills. They should be able to concisely and accurately share knowledge with their teammates.
As a Forward Deployed AI Engineer in the GTM (Go-To-Market) team, you will work on critical product integrations for our most important partners and other high-impact initiatives, owning strategy and execution alongside our end customers. This senior-level role combines hands-on technical expertise with a startup-like mindset, akin to an AI startup CTO. You’ll operate within a small, dynamic team to deliver high-stakes projects. A day’s work may include:
- Deliver solutions end-to-end that meet customer needs—understanding user pain points, scoping product specs, and designing and building LLM-powered software
- Working on frontend/backend integration for an exceptional end-user experience, including integration into existing auth, billing, and account creation systems
- Adding logging/metrics for user activity and retention to drive data-informed decisions
- Benchmarking models or helping write evals for customers to identify weaknesses
- Improving model performance through system prompt tuning or fine-tuning models
- Analyzing request logs or reading through prompt data
- Starting with fixing miscellaneous API bugs encountered in the wild
- Building internal tooling to automate repetitive tasks
- Improving xAI SDKs or developer documentation based on customer feedback
- Strong passion for solving real-world business problems and delivering measurable impact through AI solutions
- Proven track record of shipping high-quality code and successfully completing projects in challenging environments
- Ability to navigate ambiguity and adapt to changing requirements and priorities in a fast-paced startup environment
- Strong communication skills, critical when interfacing with customers to clarify requirements and drive projects to completion
- Emphasis on designing, implementing, and maintaining robust and scalable AI-driven solutions
- Proficiency in working with large, complex codebases and designing efficient data processing and model-serving architectures
- Senior profile with the ability to quickly pick up Rust and contribute to diverse technical challenges
An ideal candidate meets at least the following requirements:
- 6+ years of software engineering experience preferred
- Great verbal and written communication skills in English
- Ability to turn business and product ideas into engineering solutions
- Proven experience in AI or machine learning product implementation with APIs, back-end, and front-end interfaces
- Experience in Rust, Python and/or TypeScript
- Understanding of the HTTP protocol
- Strong engineering background, preferred in fields such as Computer Science, Mathematics, Software Engineering, Physics, and Data Science
Furthermore, candidates may stand out by having any of the following experiences:
- Building evals for new capabilities and evaluating our systems
- Demonstrating an understanding of machine learning fundamentals, including model evaluation, training, and fine-tuning
- Deploying machine learning models to production
- Writing developer documentation
- Creating and maintaining SDKs
- Showcasing the ability to work with massive datasets, optimize performance, and scale systems to handle high-throughput workloads
- Using Pulumi or Terraform
- Experience working with real-time APIs and voice model integrations (a plus)
After submitting your application, the team reviews your CV and statement of exceptional work. If your application passes this stage, you will be invited to a 15-minute interview (“technical phone interview”) during which a member of our team will ask technical questions about your background or specialization. If you clear the initial phone interview, you will enter the main process, which consists of four technical interviews:
Please note that the Statement of Exceptional Work is a key deciding factor for consideration.
- 15 min Technical Screen
- 2x 45 min Coding Interview
- 1 hour Meet the Team
Our goal is to finish the main process within one week. We don’t rely on recruiters for assessments. Every application is reviewed by a member of our technical team. All interviews will be conducted via Google Meet or in-person.
Benefits
Base salary is just one part of our total rewards package at xAI, 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.
Annual Salary Range$180,000 - $440,000 USD
xAI is an equal opportunity employer.
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What We Do
Understand the Universe
