{"id":1811024,"url":"https://alion.io/job/spacex-software-engineer-inference-ai-data-engineering","title":"Software Engineer, Inference (AI Data Engineering)","company":{"id":66,"name":"SpaceX","domain":"spacex.com","url":"https://alion.io/company/spacex","size_band":"5000+","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":95,"open_postings":20,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":102,"computed_at":"2026-10-06T05:45:30Z"}},"role":"Data Science","role_family":"Data Science","seniority":"junior","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"hybrid","remote_scope":null,"remote_scope_basis":null,"remote_working_hours":null,"hiring_geo_confidence":"structured","locations":["Palo Alto, United States"],"countries":["US"],"hiring_countries":[],"hiring_countries_total":0,"salary":{"min":135000,"max":175000,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":175000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":1,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":true,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"CI/CD","optional":false},{"name":"KV Cache","optional":false},{"name":"LLM","optional":false},{"name":"Quantization","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false},{"name":"SGLang","optional":false},{"name":"Speculative Decoding","optional":false},{"name":"TensorRT-LLM","optional":false},{"name":"vLLM","optional":false},{"name":"ClickHouse","optional":true},{"name":"Docker","optional":true},{"name":"Go","optional":true},{"name":"gRPC","optional":true},{"name":"Kubernetes","optional":true},{"name":"PostgreSQL","optional":true},{"name":"Python","optional":true},{"name":"TensorRT","optional":true},{"name":"Triton","optional":true}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-19T15:41:33Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-09-29","last_verified_at":"2026-10-06T20:30:48Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":48,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":null,"flags":[],"days_open":48},"description":"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 enabling human life on Mars.\nSOFTWARE ENGINEER, INFERENCE (AI DATA ENGINEERING)\nThe application software team is the central nervous system of SpaceX - we create mission critical applications that are used throughout SpaceX to accelerate launch vehicle production and flight as well as systems that allow Starlink to grow into a worldwide fast, reliable Internet service. We are looking for engineers who treat fellow teammates with fairness, respect, and support.\nOur team maintains a high-performance AI inference platform that serves the best models internally at SpaceX to accelerate our most ambitious engineering goals. As part of this effort in Palo Alto, you will design and optimize large-scale model serving systems end-to-end, owning everything from distributed infrastructure to deep low-level optimizations. You will work on systems that deliver reliable, high-throughput inference to power SpaceX’s mission-critical applications while maintaining the highest standards of performance and availability.\nAerospace experience is not required to be successful here - rather we look for smart, motivated, respectful, collaborative engineers who love solving problems and want to make an impact on a super inspiring mission. You will have full ownership of challenging problems, working with a team of enthusiastic engineers with diverse perspectives to design and produce solutions that enable SpaceX to achieve its loftiest engineering goals at a rapid pace. The success of the missions at SpaceX depends on the software that you and your team produce.\nThis role will report through SpaceX Internal AI Infrastructure, as we'll also be providing support for training workloads.\nRESPONSIBILITIES:\nDevelop highly reliable, high-throughput inference systems that serve the best AI models internally across SpaceX\nArchitect and implement scalable distributed infrastructure for model serving, including load balancing, auto-scaling, batch scheduling, global KV cache, and continuous batching \nOptimize latency and throughput of model inference under real production workloads, including low-level GPU kernel work, quantization, speculative decoding, and other acceleration techniques \nBuild reliable, high-concurrency serving systems with 100% uptime, low tail latency, and excellent observability \nOwn end-to-end components such as request routing, SDK development, rate limiting, and efficient scaling for internal SpaceX AI inference platforms \nBenchmark, fine-tune, and accelerate inference engines (e.g., SGLang, vLLM, TensorRT-LLM) \nDevelop custom tools for tracing, replaying, and resolving issues across the full stack - from orchestration down to GPU kernels \nCreate robust CI/CD infrastructure for seamless endpoint deployment, image publishing, and inference engine updates \nCollaborate across SpaceXAI teams to integrate inference capabilities into broader systems and workflows \nBASIC QUALIFICATIONS:\nBachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, math, or scientific discipline; OR 2+ years of professional experience building software in lieu of a degree\nExperience in designing, implementing, and maintaining reliable and horizontally scalable distributed systems\n1+ years of experience in full stack development or backend development with production systems\n1+ years of experience with Rust or C++\nPREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:\nExperience with LLM inference engines and serving frameworks (e.g., SGLang, vLLM, Triton, TensorRT-LLM) \nDeep low-level systems programming and optimizations: GPU kernels, code generation, batching, caching, parallelism, quantization, and speculative decoding \nExperience with large-scale, high-concurrency production serving systems \nKnowledge of service observability and reliability best practices \nExperience operating commonly used databases such as PostgreSQL, ClickHouse, or MongoDB \nExperience designing or building with agent SDKs and agent orchestration frameworks \nExperience with Docker, Kubernetes, and containerized applications \nExpert knowledge of gRPC (unary, response streaming, bi-directional streaming, REST mapping) \nProgramming experience in Python, Go, or similar languages \nExperience with version control, continuous integration, continuous delivery, build systems, and monitoring \nExpertise in profiling and improving application performance \nADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:\nYou may be asked to work extended hours/weekends dependent on launch cadence and platform demands \nThis role requires you to be onsite in Palo Alto. Remote and/or hybrid work will not be considered \nCOMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:\nPay Range:\nLevel 1: $135,000.00 - $175,000.00\nLevel 2: $155,000.00 - $210,000.00\nYour actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience.\nBase salary is just one part of your total rewards package at SpaceX. You may also be eligible for long-term incentives, in the form of company stock or long-term cash awards, as well as potential discretionary bonuses and the ability to purchase additional stock at a discount through an Employee Stock Purchase Plan. You will also receive access to comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short and long-term disability insurance, life insurance, paid parental leave, and various other discounts and perks. You may also accrue 3 weeks of paid vacation and will be eligible for 10 or more paid holidays per year. Employees accrue paid sick leave pursuant to Company policy which satisfies or exceeds the accrual, carryover, and use requirements of the law.\nITAR REQUIREMENTS:\nTo conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here. \nSpaceX is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with SpaceX is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.\nApplicants wishing to view a copy of SpaceX’s Affirmative Action Plan for veterans and individuals with disabilities, or applicants requiring reasonable accommodation to the application/interview process should reach out to .","description_format":"text","description_chars":6927,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":1,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":{"level":"bachelor","optional":false},"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Hybrid work","Life insurance","Parental leave","Retirement plans"],"hiring_locations":[{"name":"United States","iso":"US","kind":"country"}],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["Artificial Intelligence","Space & Aerospace"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-10-03T20:47:19Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":52,"band":"ok","label":"Likely open","p_open":1,"p_active":0.728,"p_room":0.72,"age_days":47,"expected_fill_days":102,"reasons":["conf:1","velocity","win:mid","crowd:junior,brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-06T05:45:30Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":175000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/spacex-software-engineer-inference-ai-data-engineering","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/spacex-software-engineer-inference-ai-data-engineering.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-06T21:50:20Z","cache_seconds":300,"methodology":"https://alion.io/methodology","terms":"https://alion.io/terms","contact":"https://alion.io/contact","api":"https://alion.io/developers","about":"Alion is a live layer of people, companies and AI agents: who they are, whether they are real and active right now, what they do and how to work with them, readable by people and by agents and paid per call.","catalog":"https://alion.io/catalog.json","usage":{"tier":"crawler","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":1670,"day_limit":5000,"remaining_today":3330,"minute_limit":60,"resets_at":"2026-10-07T00:00:00Z"}},"offers":[{"id":"company.slices","title":"One company in depth, by slice","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002,"plus_per_slice":{"credits":0.05,"usd":0.005}},"unit":"per company, plus each slice with data","note":"the employer in depth","call":{"mcp_tool":"get_company","arguments":{"id":66},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=66"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fspacex-software-engineer-inference-ai-data-engineering"},{"id":"market.stats","title":"A market slice: pay, demand and time to fill","status":"live","price":{"credits":1,"usd":0.1},"unit":"per slice","note":"pay, demand and time to fill for this role and place","call":{"mcp_tool":"market_stats"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=market.stats&for=job%2Fspacex-software-engineer-inference-ai-data-engineering"},{"id":"job.search","title":"Open jobs by role, technology, place, pay and visa","status":"live","price":{"credits":0.02,"usd":0.002},"unit":"per posting in a list","note":"similar open postings","call":{"mcp_tool":"search_jobs"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=job.search&for=job%2Fspacex-software-engineer-inference-ai-data-engineering"},{"id":"company.verify","title":"Is this company real and active right now","status":"pilot","price":null,"unit":"per company","request":{"url":"https://alion.io/catalog/request","method":"POST","body":"{\"offer\": \"company.verify\", \"for\": \"job/spacex-software-engineer-inference-ai-data-engineering\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fspacex-software-engineer-inference-ai-data-engineering"}]}