Software Engineer - Search Infrastructure
xAI· Engineering
Palo Alto, CA$150k - $400kfull-timePosted 2mo ago
About the role
Backend engineer role focused on designing and building scalable, high-performance search infrastructure and related subsystems to support subscriptions, monetized products, user growth, and creator monetization. Involves real-time indexing, serving, data pipelines, incident management, and driving technical direction of core search components.
Responsibilities
- Design and build large scale search infrastructure (real-time indexing, serving, and data pipelines) with strict latency and reliability requirements
- Go deep into search internals (indexing, query execution, and relevance) and shape the technical direction of the core search infrastructure
- Operate production services end to end, including monitoring, debugging, incident response, and performance optimization
- Lead and drive incident responses and recovery with peers; review and contribute to incident postmortems and uphold high standards
Qualifications
- 5+ years developing large-scale infrastructure, distributed systems or experience with storage or hardware architecture
- Proficient in high performance Rust, C++ or JVM-based languages
- Hands-on experience with search and indexing technologies (Elasticsearch, Lucene, or similar) and understanding of how they work
- Experience with operating system internals, filesystems, networking, or database storage engines
- Obsessed with performance, reliability, scalability and quality
- Ability to take full ownership of problems and learn whatever is needed to solve them
- Comfortable moving quickly in a fast-paced environment with shifting priorities and tight deadlines
Skills
Required:large-scale infrastructureRust/C++/JVM languagessearch and indexing technologiesoperating system internals / filesystems / networking / storage engines
Benefits
- equity
- comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage
- access to a 401(k) retirement plan
- short & long-term disability insurance
- life insurance
- various other discounts and perks
Last updated Oct 14, 2026. Interested? Apply on the company site.
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