{"id":43753,"url":"https://alion.io/job/xai-software-engineer-search-infrastructure","title":"Software Engineer - Search Infrastructure","company":{"id":28,"name":"xAI","domain":"x.ai","url":"https://alion.io/company/xai","size_band":"1001-5000","is_staffing_agency":false,"employer_type":"direct","is_intermediary":false,"listed_via":null,"ats_vendor":"Greenhouse","truth_index":{"grade":"A","score":88,"open_postings":100,"ghost_share":0,"stale_share":0.47,"repost_share":0,"time_to_fill_p50_days":59,"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"}},"role":"Backend","role_family":"Backend","seniority":"senior","employment_type":null,"work_mode":"on_site","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":400000,"max":null,"currency":"USD","period":"year","gross":null,"usd_annual":400000},"salary_estimate":null,"experience_years_min":5,"visa_sponsorship":false,"relocation_package":false,"has_equity":false,"technologies":[{"name":"C++","optional":false},{"name":"ElasticSearch","optional":false},{"name":"Go","optional":false},{"name":"Grok","optional":false},{"name":"Rust","optional":false}],"status":"live","first_seen_at":"2026-08-06T01:04:10Z","employer_posted_date":"2026-10-12","last_verified_at":"2026-10-16T11:20:56Z","board_verified":true,"closed_at":null,"days_open":71,"trust":{"level":"ok","repost_count":0,"flags":[],"days_open":71},"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 making life multiplanetary and expanding consciousness to the stars. \nSpaceXSI is building Super Intelligence to understand the universe and help expand humanity’s knowledge and capabilities. We work across the full Super Intelligence stack: compute (Colossus supercomputers), models (Grok), and applications (Grok Bot, Grok Build, Grok Imagine, Grok Voice, and X). We're creating a powerful flywheel where more compute trains better models, better models power more useful products, and what we learn from people using those products shapes what we build next.\nABOUT THE ROLE:\nAs a backend engineer, you’ll design and build scalable, high-performance systems that power subscriptions infrastructure, new monetized products, user growth, and creator monetization. You’ll work on mission-critical infrastructure that processes millions of transactions, optimizes user acquisition and retention, and enables creators to earn a living through their content. This is a unique opportunity to make a large-scale revenue impact while creating products that users and businesses love.\nRESPONSIBILITIES:\nDesign and build large scale search infrastructure (real-time indexing, serving, and data pipelines) that handles massive write and query loads with strict latency and reliability requirements\nGo deep into search internals (indexing, query execution, and relevance) and help shape the technical direction of the core search infrastructure\nOperate production services end to end, including monitoring, debugging, incident response, and performance optimization\nLead and drive incident responses and recovery with your peers. Review and contribute to incident postmortems and hold a high bar for the same\nBASIC QUALIFICATIONS:\n5+ years developing large-scale infrastructure, distributed systems or experience with storage or hardware architecture.\nProficient in high performance Rust, C++ or JVM-based languages\nHands-on experience with search and indexing technologies (Elasticsearch, Lucene, or similar) and an understanding of how they work and why\nExperience with operating system internals, filesystems, networking, or database storage engines\nObsessed performance, reliability, scalability and quality\nAbility to take full ownership of problems and learn whatever is needed to solve them\nComfortable moving quickly in a fast-paced environment with shifting priorities and tight deadlines\nPREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:\nContributions to open-source search or infrastructure projects\nCOMPENSATION AND BENEFITS\n$150,000 - $400,000 USD\nBase 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.\nSpaceXSI is an equal opportunity employer. For details on data processing, view our Recruitment Privacy Notice.","description_format":"text","description_chars":3174,"description_truncated":false,"requirements":{"experience_years_min":5,"management_years_min":null,"team_size_min":null,"manages_managers":false,"education":null,"security_clearance":false,"languages":[]},"benefits":["Equity","Life insurance","Retirement plans"],"hiring_locations":[],"hiring_excludes":[],"relocation_offered":false,"industries":["LLM & Generative AI","Foundation Models","AI Research Labs"],"lifecycle":[{"event":"open","at":"2026-08-06T01:04:10Z"}],"visa":[],"liveness":{"score":31,"band":"fade","label":"Fading","p_open":1,"p_active":0.695,"p_room":0.44,"age_days":71,"expected_fill_days":59,"reasons":["conf:3","velocity","win:tail","crowd:brand"],"computed_at":"2026-10-16T05:45:00Z"},"pay":{"stated_usd_annual":400000,"is_top_pay":true},"html_url":"https://alion.io/job/xai-software-engineer-search-infrastructure","json_url":"https://alion.io/job/xai-software-engineer-search-infrastructure.json","meta":{"generated_at":"2026-10-16T11:26:19Z","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_verified","counted_by":"address","units_charged":1,"used_today":10231,"day_limit":null,"remaining_today":null,"minute_limit":300,"resets_at":"2026-10-17T00:00:00Z"}},"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":28},"rest":"https://alion.io/mcp/rest/get_company?id=28"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.slices&for=job%2Fxai-software-engineer-search-infrastructure"},{"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%2Fxai-software-engineer-search-infrastructure"},{"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%2Fxai-software-engineer-search-infrastructure"},{"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/xai-software-engineer-search-infrastructure\", \"note\": \"what you need it for\"}"},"human":"https://alion.io/catalog?offer=company.verify&for=job%2Fxai-software-engineer-search-infrastructure"}]}