AI Engineer & Researcher - Human Data

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. Engineers are encouraged to work across multiple areas of the company, and as a result, all engineers and researchers share the title "Member of Technical Staff."

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.

xAI does not have recruiters. Every application is reviewed directly by a technical member of the team.

About the Team

xAI’s Human Data team is responsible for delivering high-quality data to drive frontier model performance. We collaborate closely with the post-training team and AI tutor team to develop new solutions that accelerate research progress across model capabilities, evaluation, safety, and alignment.

About the Role

In this role you might:

• Build features end-to-end: front-end, back-end, system design, debugging and testing
• Build systems that monitor and flag quality issues with large-scale data collections.
• Help drive high-priority data collection projects for our team.
• Understand training and eval data needs across xAI to improve our platform, and help develop our technical roadmap and prioritization
• Create innovative human and synthetic data generation methods and pipelines.
• Ensure that our overall data collection platform is secure, scalable, and delightful to use.
• Innovating new ideas that bring us closer to our goal: to develop AI systems that can accurately understand the universe and aid humanity in its pursuit of knowledge.

Exceptional candidates may have:

• Experience delivering high-quality web applications in rapidly changing environments - as a tech lead, former founder, etc.
• Experience collaborating in highly cross-functional environments
• Experience in connecting machine learning model behavior to data distribution and data quality.
• Experience in fine-tuning large language models.

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. HTML/CSS interview
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. We don’t rely on recruiters for assessments. Every application is reviewed by a member of our technical team. All interviews will be conducted via Google Meet.

Annual Salary Range

$180,000 - $440,000 USD