xAI· Infrastructure· Palo Alto, CA
Member of Technical Staff - Real-Time Storage
Comp$180,000 – $440,000
Classified Tasks (15)
Automate 0%Augment 80%Human-Only 20%
Augment (12)
AI assists, human decides
Design, build, and launch to production new features and improvements aimed at unifying common components across storage systems
technical
Diagnose and resolve performance issues by identifying root causes and delivering solutions to meet customers' latency, availability, and data durability requirements
technical
Review and contribute to incident postmortems and enforce high standards for postmortem quality and corrective actions
operational
Conduct code reviews and design reviews to improve system quality, correctness, and maintainability
technical
Build and operate an exabyte-scale S3-compatible object store for training, inference, recommendations, and real-time data extraction
technical
Build and operate a multi-tenant transactional key/value store that serves hundreds of millions of requests per second
technical
Build and operate a caching tier that serves billions of requests per second
technical
Build and operate a scalable vector database to power recommendation systems
technical
Build and operate specialized databases that serve hundreds of millions of requests per second
technical
Collaborate with team members on system design, implementation, and operational tasks
technical
Make data-driven decisions and adapt designs and implementations based on new information and metrics
analytical
Learn new technologies and skills on the job to support evolving storage and database requirements
technical
Human-Only (3)
Requires human judgment
Lead and drive incident response and recovery efforts during production outages
leadership
Mentor peers through coaching, training, and feedback to uplevel team capabilities
leadership
Collaborate with customers and stakeholders to gather requirements and deliver tailored storage and database solutions
communication
Job description
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. ABOUT THE ROLE: We’re looking for exceptional storage & database engineers who want to join us on a new project to deeply integrate xAI’s advanced AI infrastructure into a platform used by around 600 million users every month. We’re building xAI’s new storage tier that powers training, inference, recommendations, and real-time data extraction. We build and operate: An exabyte-scale S3-compatible object store A multi-tenant transactional key/value store that serves 100s of millions requests per second A caching tier that serves billions of requests per second A scalable vector database that powers our recommendation systems A few other specialized databases serving hundreds of millions requests per second RESPONSIBILITIES: Design, build, and launch to production new features and improvements aimed at unifying common components across the storage systems Dive into performance issues and work with customers and deliver solutions to cater to customers’ latency, availability and data durability requirements. Lead and drive incident responses and recovery with your peers. Review and contribute to incident postmortems and hold a high bar for the same. Work in a collaborative environment and uplevel your peers by doing mentoring, code and design reviews. Be open to develop new skills and learn on the job as we navigate new technology spaces. Ground your decisions with data and reasoning and adapt to new information to make informed choices. BASIC QUALIFICATIONS: Have at least 7 years of experience in software development, plus 2+ years building storage systems or databases. Obsessed with reliability, performance, and quality Proficient in high performance C++, Rust, or JVM-based languages Expertise in building, running, and operating scalable and resilient distributed systems COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS: $180,000 - $440,000 USD 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 .