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AI Tooling Engineer - Model Performance & Evals

San Francisco & Palo Alto, CA

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

About the Team

The Starfleet team builds the systems that power xAI’s next leap—self-driven AI that thinks, acts, and learns. We’re small, cross-functional, and obsessed with tools that supercharge our models and agents.

About the Role

In this role you might:

  • Build tools to benchmark, evaluate, and boost our models’ reasoning and performance.
  • Design pipelines that streamline agent testing and iteration—think evals at scale.
  • Collaborate with researchers to turn insights into systems that ship fast.
  • Leverage GPU access to prototype and scale bleeding-edge solutions.
  • Innovate ideas that bring us closer to AI that truly understands the universe.

Exceptional candidates may have:

  • Shipped ML-adjacent tools or workflows in startups—or built something epic as a founder.
  • Wrestled with evals, data pipelines, or model optimization and came out on top.
  • Full-stack or systems chops—enough to bridge research and production.

Tech Stack

  • Typescript, Python, Rust
  • React, Express, PostgreSQL 

Location

The role is based in the Bay Area [San Francisco and Palo Alto]. Candidates are expected to be located near the Bay Area or open to relocation.

Interview Process

After submitting your application, the team reviews your CV and statement of exceptional work. If your application passes this stage, you will be invited to a 15-minute interview (“phone interview”) during which a member of our team will ask some basic questions. If you clear the initial phone interview, you will enter the main process, which consists of four technical interviews:

  1. Coding assessment in a language of your choice.
  2. Front end technical interview, in React/Typescript
  3. Systems hands-on: Demonstrate practical skills in a live problem-solving session.
  4. Meet the Team: Present your past exceptional work and your vision with xAI to a small audience.

Our goal is to finish the main process within one week. All interviews will be conducted via Google Meet.

Annual Salary Range

$180,000 - $440,000 USD

xAI is an equal opportunity employer.

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