What you’ll do

• Build and optimize traffic platforms that automate and simplify the lifecycle of production inference engines across dozens of on-premise and cloud clusters, managing core traffic primitives like load balancing, routing, overload control, authentication / authorization, encryption in transit.
• Manage, extend, and optimize xAI’s production inference capabilities with L4/L7 proxies such as Envoy, NGINX.
• Manage and extend xAI’s Service Discovery systems, both in and outside of kubernetes (DNS, xDS control planes).
• Collaborate with Network Fabric Engineers to improve host networking + fabric stability for large scale training runs (ie Grok 4 and beyond).
• Work with a fast, small technical team to execute projects in the critical path of xAI.

What we’d like to see

• 2+ years of experience operating Kubernetes clusters, or experience writing + deploying controllers.
• 2+ years of experience configuring and deploying Envoy, NGINX, HAProxy, or some other L7 software load balancer.
• 1+ years of experience deploying and configuring kubernetes CNI plugins (Calico, Cilium, Flannel) or experience with IPAM.
• 1+ years of experience with DNS systems (ex: CoreDNS, Unbound) or service discovery control planes (xDS)
• 1+ years of experience with cloud networking primitives (VPC Route Tables, Cloud NAT, Peering / Transit Gateways, CDN, Cloudflare Workers or equivalent)
• Experience with host level network proxies (iptables, nftables, IPVS, eBPF programs) is a plus.
• Deep experience with gRPC Client libraries (grpcio / grpc-go / grpc-java) is a plus.
• Experience with service mesh (Istio, Linkerd) is a plus.
• Demonstrated experience in working with Kubernetes and Envoy internals – can you tell us how k8s cached clients work? Can you tell us how Envoy scales and manages state?
• Demonstrated experience debugging performance and reliability issues that span from L3 to L7 (ex: how would a gRPC client in a cloud environment call a gRPC server in an on-prem server? Describe the entire network path and any issues to watch out for, including Service Discovery / DNS, gRPC channel management, egress proxies, VPC routing, peering/PNI, edge caching / CDN, L4 loadbalancing devices, host networking + virtualization, k8s networking, L7 routing, TLS / authnz, TCP/IP)

Location

This 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.

Tech Stack

• Kubernetes
• Envoy / xDS
• Golang and Rust

Interview Process

1. Application Review: Submit your CV and a statement of exceptional work. Our team will review your application to assess fit.
2. Phone Interview (45 minutes): A brief conversation with a team member to discuss your background, key accomplishments, and motivation.
3. Main Interview Process

• 2 Coding Assessments: Solve problems in a language of your choice.
• Systems Hands-On: Demonstrate practical skills in a live problem-solving session.
• Project Deep-Dive: Present your past exceptional work to a small audience.

Annual Salary Range

$180,000 - $440,000 USD

Benefits

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.

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