xAI
Software Engineer - Search Infrastructure
About this role
Design and build large-scale search infrastructure at xAI, handling millions of transactions with strict performance requirements. You'll own production systems end-to-end, from real-time indexing to query optimization, while driving incident response and technical direction for core search capabilities.
What you'll do
- Design and implement large-scale search infrastructure including real-time indexing, serving, and data pipelines handling massive write/query loads
- Develop deep expertise in search internals (indexing, query execution, relevance) and guide technical direction
- Operate production services with monitoring, debugging, incident response, and performance optimization
- Lead incident response and recovery efforts with peers; review and contribute to postmortems
What they're looking for
- 5+ years building large-scale infrastructure or distributed systems
- High-performance Rust, C++, or JVM language proficiency
- Search and indexing technologies (Elasticsearch, Lucene, or equivalent)
- Operating system internals, filesystems, networking, or database storage engines
- Performance optimization and reliability engineering
- Problem ownership and self-directed learning
- Fast-paced execution with shifting priorities
- Open-source search/infrastructure contributions (preferred)
Benefits
- Equity compensation
- Comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage
- 401(k) retirement plan
- Short and long-term disability insurance
- Life insurance
- Various discounts and perks
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xAI
xAI builds advanced AI infrastructure and systems, including the Grok model inference platform and Colossus GPU cluster. The company is hiring Mechanical, Electrical, and Facilities Engineers to design and maintain its data center operations, as well as Software Engineers to optimize high-performance inference systems and datacenter networking.
View all jobs at xAILikely interview questions
- Describe your experience designing or optimizing search infrastructure at scale—what was the biggest performance challenge you solved?
- Walk us through how you've debugged and resolved a critical production incident in a distributed system.