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xAIxAIPalo Alto, CA

Software Engineer, Compute Infra

Designs, builds, and operates massive-scale compute clusters and custom container orchestration platforms for AI training and inference at exascale. Requires deep expertise in virtualization, containerization, systems programming in C++/Rust, and Linux kernel internals.

180k – 440k/yr
On-siteDevOps / SRE

About the role

Responsibilities

  • Build and manage massive-scale clusters to host, persist, train, and serve AI workloads with extreme reliability and performance.
  • Design, develop, and extend an in-house container orchestration platform that achieves superior scalability, isolation, resource efficiency, and fault-tolerance compared to off-the-shelf solutions.
  • Collaborate with research teams to architect and optimize compute clusters specifically for large-scale training runs, inference services, and real-time applications.
  • Profile, debug, and resolve complex system-level performance bottlenecks, resource contention, scheduling issues, and reliability problems across the full stack.
  • Own end-to-end infrastructure initiatives with first-principles design, rigorous testing, automation, and continuous optimization to support frontier AI compute demands.

Required Qualifications

  • Deep expertise in virtualization technologies (KVM, Xen, QEMU) and advanced containerization/sandboxing (Kata, Firecracker, gVisor, Sysbox, or equivalent).
  • Strong proficiency in systems programming languages such as C/C++ and Rust.
  • Proven track record profiling, debugging, and optimizing complex system-level performance issues, with deep knowledge of Linux kernel internals, resource management, scheduling, memory management, and low-level engineering.
  • Hands-on experience building or significantly enhancing distributed compute platforms, orchestration systems, or high-performance infrastructure at scale.
  • Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, meritocratic environment with full ownership, high standards, and a focus on rigorous execution.

Preferred Qualifications

  • Experience in Linux kernel development, hypervisor extensions, or low-level system programming for compute-intensive workloads.
  • Proven track record operating or designing large-scale AI training/inference clusters (GPU/TPU scale).
  • Experience with custom runtimes, isolation techniques, or bespoke platforms for specialized AI compute.
  • Familiarity with performance tools, tracing, and debugging in production distributed environments.

Compensation and Benefits

Annual Salary Range: $180,000 - $440,000 USD

Base salary is just one part of total rewards, 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.

Skills

KubernetesKvmXenQemuKataFirecrackerGvisorSysboxC++RustLinux Kernel

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