What are the responsibilities and job description for the Member of Technical Staff, Applied Inference position at xai?
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. 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 employees are expected to have strong communication skills. They should be able to concisely and accurately share knowledge with their teammates.
Tech Stack
- Kubernetes
- Buildkite / ArgoCD
- Prometheus / Grafana / PagerDuty
- Pulumi / Terraform
- SGLang: This team is actively working on one of the most popular open-source inference engines, SGLang. You have the opportunity to work on open-source projects.
- Custom debugging and tracing tools
Focus
- Architect and implement scalable distributed infrastructure for model serving, such as load balancing, auto scaling, batch scheduling, and global KVcache systems.
- Ensure the reliability of inference services, targeting 100% uptime, a 0% error rate, and good tail performance, through proactive monitoring, fault-tolerant designs, and rigorous testing.
- Create custom tools to trace, replay, and fix issues or crashes across the entire stack, from cluster orchestration to GPU kernels.
- Benchmark and fine-tune inference engines to deliver optimal performance under diverse, production workloads.
- Develop robust CI/CD infrastructure to enable seamless endpoint deployment, image publishing, feature rollouts, and inference engine updates.
Ideal Experiences
- Worked on large-scale, high-concurrent production serving.
- Worked on GPU inference engines.
- Worked on testing, benchmarking, and the reliability of inference services.
- Worked on designing and implementing CI/CD infrastructure.
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.
Interview Process
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 (“phone interview”) during which a member of our team will ask some basic questions. If you clear the initial phone interview, you will enter the main process, which consists of 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. All interviews will be conducted via Google Meet.
Annual Salary Range
$180,000 - $440,000 USD
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.
xAI is an equal opportunity employer. For details on data processing, view our Recruitment Privacy Notice.
Salary : $180,000 - $440,000