# Data Engineer

**Company:** [xAI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/xai)
**Location:** Palo Alto, CA
**Role:** Data Engineering
**Salary:** $240k – $280k/yr
**Experience:** 1+ years
**Skills:** Python, Kubernetes, Parquet, Data Pipelines, Machine Learning, Neural Networks, Language Models, Statistics, Distributed Systems, Large-Scale Datasets
**Posted:** 2026-04-24

> Build and maintain production data pipelines for AI model training, ensuring high-quality data through cleaning, transformation, and evaluation. Requires 1+ years experience with Python, ML, and neural networks; bachelor's in STEM.

## Job Description

## Responsibilities
- Analyze the performance and impact of data used throughout the model training lifecycle
- Investigate anomalous model behavior and rigorously identify the data issues that drive poor downstream performance
- Design, build, and improve the data cleaning, transformation, and quality-control steps required to produce high-quality training data
- Research, evaluate, and develop frontier methods for improving data quality and effectiveness in AI model development
- Apply statistical techniques and empirical analysis to make informed, data-driven decisions about dataset quality and model outcomes
- Partner across teams to identify where data needs exist and define the highest-impact opportunities for new data acquisition and improvement
- Build and maintain production-grade data pipelines, tooling, and software systems that ingest, process, validate, and deliver data for training
- Develop metrics, evaluation frameworks, and monitoring systems to assess how data quality influences model behavior at scale
- Fuse data from multiple sources into reliable, usable datasets for research and production model training
- Create shared datasets, tooling, and internal data products that enable other teams to analyze, debug, and improve model performance

## Basic Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, data science, physics, mathematics, or a STEM discipline
- 1+ years of data/software engineering experience (internship experience is applicable)
- Experience in implementing or analyzing language models or neural networks

## Preferred Skills and Experience
- Professional experience in analytics, data science, machine learning, or data engineering
- Experience building and operating production data pipelines for neural network or large-scale machine learning workloads
- Strong experience with Python and the broader ecosystem of libraries and tools used in modern machine learning and data development
- Experience working with Parquet or similar columnar storage formats in large-scale data systems
- Familiarity with Kubernetes and distributed production environments
- Experience developing predictive models and machine learning pipelines, including clustering, forecasting, anomaly detection, or related techniques
- Experience working with very large-scale datasets, including terabyte- to petabyte-scale data systems
- Strong statistical intuition and the ability to use quantitative analysis to guide technical and product decision, including familiarity of scaling ladder design studies
- Ability to operate effectively in a dynamic environment with evolving priorities, changing requirements, and fast-moving technical challenges
- Demonstrated ability to take ownership of ambiguous problems, drive projects independently, and develop new expertise where needed

## Compensation and Benefits
- $240,000 - $280,000 USD base salary
- 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

## Similar roles

- [Software Engineer, Data](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/92624cb0-7074-4fd3-94db-b6f65aa61db9) - xAI - Palo Alto, CA - $240k – $280k/yr
- [Software Engineer - Data Movement Platform](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/d0023405-2358-4759-829b-421383a99e11) - Reddit - Remote - $164k – $230k/yr
- [Software Engineer, Data Platform](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/6093a137-ce0a-48bf-ac92-33bcc90730d7) - Nuro - Mountain View, CA - $160k – $241k/yr
- [Analytics Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/f5dc6ed9-95dd-445b-a9ee-65707adcdefc) - Coinbase - Remote - $152k – $179k/yr
- [Data Science Engineer, Analytics](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/98f22e3e-729b-428c-9943-4174c1e2dcff) - Turquoise Health - Remote - $145k – $160k/yr

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/021ceadb-52cb-4531-a39c-1ad0d4112b59
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/021ceadb-52cb-4531-a39c-1ad0d4112b59