xAI

Member of Technical Staff - Recommendation Systems

xAI · Palo Alto, CA
Palo Alto, CA $180K–$440K Posted 2026-06-29
Salary
$180K–$440K
Type
Full-time
Experience
8+ yr

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

ABOUT THE ROLE:

We’re seeking exceptional Applied engineers to join a high-priority project that approximately 600 million monthly users use. This is an exciting opportunity for individuals with a engineer or scientist background to apply their skills to recommendation systems, ranking algorithms, search technologies, and many other systems. You’ll work at the intersection of advanced AI development and real-world impact, enhancing the ability to connect users with relevant content, accounts, and experiences.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

  • Designing and architecting recommendation algorithms across various product surfaces
  • Leverage all of xAI’s infra and AI stacks to dramatically enhance the user experience
  • Write data pipelines and training jobs that continuously learn from product data.
  • Iterate and improve the algorithm by gathering user feedback in real time through experimentation
  • Ensuring scalability and efficiency of machine learning systems

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

  • Knowledge of data infrastructure like Kafka, Clickhouse, and Spark
  • Experienced in implementing recommender systems and/or deep learning applications at industrial scale
  • Skilled in one or more DL software frameworks such as JAX or PyTorch
  • Exceptional candidates may be experienced in writing CUDA kernels

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

$180,000 - $440,000 USD

Base 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.

xAI is an equal opportunity employer. For details on data processing, view our  Recruitment Privacy Notice .

KafkaSparkPyTorch
$110K — 10th pctl $265K — 90th pctl
This role’s midpoint $310K vs. market median $185K for Engineering roles
+65%
above median
Based on 14,000+ Engineering roles with disclosed salary ranges tracked on NewJob.
xAI

xAI

Artificial Intelligence · Series E+ · Palo Alto, USA

Stage & Valuation
Series E+ · $250B
Key Investors
Valor Equity Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital
Open roles on NewJob
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Engineering (52) · Operations (40) · Design (3)
xAI builds artificial intelligence models and tools to accelerate human scientific discovery and enhance reasoning capabilities. The company develops AI solutions including the Grok platform to understand complex topics and assist users in exploring information.
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