# Software Engineer, Compute Infra

**Company:** [xAI](https://hotfix.jobs/companies/xai)
**Location:** Palo Alto, CA
**Role:** DevOps / SRE
**Salary:** $180k – $440k/yr
**Skills:** Kubernetes, Kvm, Xen, Qemu, Kata, Firecracker, Gvisor, Sysbox, C++, Rust, Linux Kernel
**Posted:** 2026-03-06

> 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.

## Job Description

## 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.

## Similar roles

- [Platform Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/14231c8e-abad-4a41-94e3-d41fb2ede6f5) - Govsignals - New York, NY - $180k – $250k/yr
- [Network Engineer, Design & Engineering](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/48ff3694-5232-4d66-b43c-a091b96c8902) - Fluidstack - New York, NY - $180k – $300k/yr
- [Developer Productivity Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/9a60db26-80d5-4b2a-b613-56ae58d49794) - Hightouch - Remote - $180k – $320k/yr
- [Data Center Network Engineer](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/473ec43a-a5df-4433-99bd-4053f3e6f6bc) - Baseten - San Francisco, CA - $180k – $360k/yr
- [Infrastructure Engineer (Observability)](https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/098c81d9-0827-4baa-a70b-444cc5b04f37) - Lightning AI - Remote - $180k – $200k/yr

**Apply:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/9b5b61ef-087a-4c62-82b1-73cad2e7c960
**Canonical:** https://hotfix.jobs/jobs/9b5b61ef-087a-4c62-82b1-73cad2e7c960