AI Engineer & Researcher - Inference

About xAI: 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. Engineers are encouraged to work across multiple areas of the company, and as a result, all engineers and researchers share the title 'Member of Technical Staff.' We operate with a flat organizational structure where all employees are expected to be hands-on and contribute directly to the company's mission. Leadership is given to those who show initiative and consistently deliver excellence, making work ethic and strong prioritization skills important. Strong communication skills are essential for sharing knowledge concisely and accurately among teammates. xAI does not have recruiters; every application is reviewed directly by a technical member of the team.

Tech Stack:

• Languages: Python / Rust
• Frameworks: PyTorch / JAX
• Hardware: NCCL, CUDA (C++ and Triton)

Location: The role is based in the Bay Area (San Francisco and Palo Alto). Candidates are expected to be located near the Bay Area or open to relocation.

Focus:

• Optimizing the latency and throughput of model inference.
• Building reliable production serving systems to serve millions of users.
• Accelerating research on scaling test-time compute.
• Innovating new ideas to develop AI systems that can accurately understand the universe and generate new knowledge.

Ideal Experiences:

• System optimizations for model serving (batching, caching, load balancing, model parallelism).
• Low-level optimizations for inference (CUDA kernels, code generation).
• Algorithmic optimizations for inference (quantization, distillation, speculative decoding).

Interview Process:

• After submitting your application, the team reviews your CV and statement of exceptional work.
• If successful, you will have a 15-minute phone interview with a team member.
• Clear the phone interview to enter the main process, which includes four technical interviews:
  • Coding assessment in a language of your choice.
  • Systems hands-on: Demonstrate practical skills in a live problem-solving session.
  • Project deep-dive: Present your past exceptional work to a small audience.
  • Meet and greet with the wider team.

Our goal is to finish the main process within one week. We conduct all interviews via Google Meet without relying on recruiters for assessments.

Annual Salary Range: $180,000 - $440,000 USD

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