AI Engineer & Researcher - Inference

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 engineers and researchers are expected to have strong communication skills. They should be able to concisely and accurately share knowledge with their teammates.

Tech Stack

• Python / Rust
• PyTorch / JAX
• CUDA / CUTLASS / Triton / NCCL
• Kubernetes
• SGLang: This team is leading the development of one of the most popular open-source inference engines, SGLang (https://github.com/sgl-project/sglang/tree/main). You have the opportunity to work on open-source projects.

Focus

• Optimizing the latency and throughput of model inference.
• Building reliable production serving systems to serve millions of users.
• Accelerating research on scaling test-time compute.

Ideal Experiences

• Worked on system optimizations for model serving, such as batching, caching, load balancing, and model parallelism.
• Worked on low-level optimizations for inference, such as GPU kernels and code generation.
• Worked on algorithmic optimizations for inference, such as quantization, distillation, and speculative decoding.
• Worked on large-scale, high concurrent production serving.
• Worked on testing, benchmarking, and reliability of inference services.

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.