Software Engineer, Data

xAI
Palo Alto, CA / Palo Alto, CA, Palo Alto, California, United States2026-04-29

About the job

At xAI, we are building AI systems that push the frontier of human knowledge and scientific discovery. High-quality data is fundamental to every stage of that mission. Our Data team is responsible for ensuring that the models are trained on the right data, in the right form, at the right quality, across every phase of the training lifecycle. This includes partnering closely with acquisition teams to identify where valuable data can be sourced, determining what data is needed to improve model performance, and building the production pipelines and systems that transform raw inputs into high-quality training data at scale. We work at the intersection of software, data, infrastructure, and machine learning to ensure our models train effectively and reliably.

Responsibilities

Develop a highly reliable and scalable enterprise data platform to orchestrate data acquisition, preparation, training, quality evaluation, and delivery for model training

Create new features such as data lineage, visibility, and monitoring for end-to-end training that improve the quality of the data and model performance

Collaborate with peers on architecture, design, and code reviews

Build prototypes to prove out key design concepts and quantify technical constraints

Own all aspects of software engineering and product development

Deep dive into business problems, find efficient solutions and apply first principles thinking

Qualifications

Minimum

Bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, engineering, math, physics, or scientific discipline; OR 2+ years of professional experience building software in lieu of a degree1+ years of experience in application development, software engineering, data engineering, or data science

Preferred

Programming experience in Python, Rust, Java, C#, Scala, Go or similar languages

Frontend experience in Angular, React, or similar JavaScript frameworks

Hands-on experience with Kubernetes and containerized deployments

Experience with Ray, AI training and orchestration

Experience with relational and non-relational databases, data lakes e.g. PostgreSQL, Iceberg, Clickhouse, or similar

Experience with data exploration tools like Grafana, Superset, or similar

Good understanding of version control, testing, continuous integration, build, deployment and monitoring

Good understanding of statistics, machine learning algorithms and frameworks