---
title: 'Network Engineer - ML Infrastructure (High-Speed Interconnects) at xAI'
canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/network-engineer-ml-infrastructure-high-speed-interconnects-xai-palo-alto-vzmcbyb73nwe'
type: 'job'
last_seen: '2026-09-14'
---

# Network Engineer - ML Infrastructure (High-Speed Interconnects) at xAI

- **Company:** xAI
- **Location:** Palo Alto, CA
- **Posted:** 2026-02-05
- **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-14
- **Apply:** https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/xai/jobs/5043570007

## Job description

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

## ABOUT THE ROLE:

SpaceXAI is building at a furious pace with the latest compute and switching hardware to help people understand the universe.  We are looking for exceptional ML Infrastructure Engineers with deep expertise in high-speed interconnect technologies to design, build, and optimize the network fabric that powers large-scale AI training and inference clusters.  This strategic role will drive innovation in high-bandwidth, low-latency, power-efficient interconnects critical for AI/ML clusters based on advanced computing platforms.

You will have the opportunity to work on all modalities of interconnects connecting GPUs and switches both inside and between data centers, including our primary front and backend networks that train Grok and that customers use for inference. Engineers will own all aspects from design and development to build and operations. You will be expected to define and improve team processes and to contribute to scaling and maintenance efforts.

You will focus on the physical layer and system-level integration of copper (ACC, AEC, CPC) and optical (FRO, LRO/TRO, LPO, AOC, CPO) interconnects that directly determine the performance, power efficiency, scale, and cost of next-generation AI/ML clusters.  This is a highly technical, hands-on role bridging ML cluster requirements with cutting-edge interconnect hardware — ideal for engineers who love both large-scale AI systems and the physics/engineering of 200G+ SerDes, PAM4, photonics, signal integrity and diagnostics.

## RESPONSIBILITIES:

- Design, validate, and productize high-speed copper and optical connectivity solutions for AI clusters (100k+ GPU scale).
- Own vendor due diligence and onboarding for new 1.6T products including AEC and pluggable optical transceivers (DR4/8, FR4) including rigorous bring-up & characterization.
- Investigate the opportunity for LPO and LRO in our network.
- Evaluate early co-packaged and near-packaged engines for switches and GPUs.
- Pathfinding for new interconnect modalities including VCSEL, microLED, THz radio-based solutions to improve network economics and reliability.
- Work closely with vendors (transceiver, cable, SerDes, DSP, silicon photonics foundries) to influence roadmaps and ensure timely delivery of next-gen solutions.
- Collaborate with ML training teams to translate workload communication patterns into concrete interconnect topology and optical reconfigurability requirements.
- Perform system-level simulation of end-to-end fabric performance.
- Drive failure analysis, root cause, and corrective actions for interconnect-related issues in production clusters through fleet-level metrics gathering and analysis.
- Contribute to internal tooling and automation for interconnect health monitoring, telemetry, diagnostics, remediation and automated qualification pipelines.
- Stay current with industry standards (OIF CMIS, IEEE) and emerging technologies (multi-core/hollow-core fiber, 448G SerDes, TFLN, ring resonators)

## BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

- At least 8+ years of hands-on experience in designing, deploying and operating high-speed copper and optical interconnects, preferably in a module design role or in a hyperscale datacenter environment.
- Master's or PhD degree in Electrical Engineering, Photonics or Physics.
- Deep knowledge of PAM4 SerDes performance, equalization, jitter, crosstalk.
- Solid operational understanding of FEC, Retimers, TIAs and Drivers.
- Deep knowledge of optical link budget analysis and performance metrics including TDECQ, OMA, Tcode, stressed receiver sensitivity and associated diagnostics.
- Expertise in transceiver components including CW lasers, SiPh PICs, EML, DSP, passive subassemblies, their failure modes and characterization.
- Knowledge of thermal, mechanical, power, signal integrity constraints in dense hardware.
- Knowledge of SiPh design process, yield improvement and reliability testing.
- Familiarity with CPO technologies and challenges/risk areas.
- Familiarity with subcomponent supply chains and global manufacturers, ODMs and CMs.
- Strong problem-solving skills and ability to thrive in a fast-paced, ambiguous setting.

## COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

$180,000 - $440,000 USD

Base salary is just one part of our total rewards package at SpaceXAI, 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. SpaceXAI is an equal opportunity employer. For details on data processing, view our [Recruitment Privacy Notice](https://x.ai/legal/recruitment-privacy-notice).

## About xAI

## Company Overview
- **One‑liner**: xAI builds artificial intelligence systems to accelerate human scientific discovery and “understand the universe,” with products spanning frontier reasoning models, real‑time voice, and generative media.
- **Entity Type**: Private (last funding round: Series E, January 2026; acquired by SpaceX in February 2026)
- **Headquarters**: Palo Alto, California, USA (additional offices in Seattle, WA; Memphis, TN; London, UK)
- **Founded**: 2023
- **Founders**: Elon Musk

## Core Business
- Primary industry: Artificial Intelligence (AI research, large language models, voice AI, generative media)
- Target customers: B2B (developers via API), B2C (consumers via Grok on 𝕏, SuperGrok subscriptions), Enterprise & Government (xAI for Government)
- Mission: “To understand the universe” – building AI that extends what humanity can know and do.

## Products & Services
- **Grok (base models)** : A conversational AI assistant modeled after *The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy*, available on the 𝕏 platform and via API.
- **Grok 4 / Grok 4 Heavy**: The most intelligent reasoning models, featuring native tool use and real‑time search integration (SuperGrok and Premium+ tiers).
- **Grok Voice Agent API / Voice Agent Builder**: Create custom voice agents in under two minutes (no‑code) – includes speech‑to‑text, text‑to‑speech, custom voice cloning, and multilingual support.
- **Grok Imagine API**: State‑of‑the‑art video generation API (quality, cost, latency).
- **Grok‑1.5 / Grok‑2 / Grok‑2 mini**: Earlier model releases with improved reasoning and 128K context length.
- **PromptIDE**: An integrated development environment for prompt engineering and interpretability research.
- **xAI for Government**: A suite of frontier AI products tailored for U.S. government customers.
- **Colossus Supercomputer**: 200,000‑GPU cluster built in 122 days, used for training xAI models; now also leased to Anthropic (Colossus 1 agreement).

All products are delivered as SaaS, API, and model weights (open‑source release of Grok‑1).

## Market Standing
- **Valuation / Funding**: 
  - Series B (May 2024): $6 B 
  - Series C (Dec 2024): $6 B (led by A16Z, BlackRock, Fidelity, Kingdom Holdings, Lightspeed, MGX, Morgan Stanley, OIA, QIA, Sequoia, Valor, Vy Capital, others)
  - Series E (Jan 2026): $20 B
  - Acquisition by SpaceX announced Feb 2, 2026 (terms not disclosed).
- **Key Metric**: Total disclosed funding ~$32 B; annual revenue not publicly available.
- **Notable Investors/Partners**: A16Z, BlackRock, Fidelity, Sequoia Capital, Morgan Stanley, Kingdom Holdings, Lightspeed, MGX, Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Anthropic (Colossus deal), U.S. Department of War (selected Dec 2025).
- **Growth Signals**: 
  - Rapid scaling from founding to 200K‑GPU cluster in 122 days.
  - Over 214 open roles listed on Greenhouse as of mid‑2026.
  - #1 on Big Bench Audio (Grok 4 audio performance).
  - Expanded into voice agents, video generation, and government verticals within 3 years.
  - Acquisition by SpaceX signals deep integration with space‑tech resources.

## Competitive Advantages
- **Compute infrastructure**: Colossus supercomputer – one of the largest GPU clusters in existence, enabling faster training and larger models.
- **Model performance**: Grok 4 claims “most intelligent model in the world” with top benchmarks (Big Bench Audio #1).
- **Vertical integration**: Tight coupling with 𝕏 platform for data, distribution, and real‑time world knowledge.
- **Speed of execution**: “Move quickly and fix things” culture; built Colossus in 122 days.
- **Government contracts**: Early access to public‑sector AI markets (U.S. Department of War).
- **Talent density**: Small, focused team of researchers and engineers; in‑person work accelerates iteration.

## Strategic Focus
- **Continue advancing frontier reasoning** (Grok 4 Heavy, next‑gen models).
- **Expand voice and multimodal APIs** for developers (Voice Agent Builder, Custom Voices Library).
- **Deepen government / defense partnerships** (xAI for Government, Department of War).
- **Scale infrastructure** post‑acquisition via SpaceX resources.
- **Remain “open” where strategic** (open‑source release of Grok‑1 weights).

## Why Work Here
- **Culture**: “Ambitious goals, fast execution” – rejects consensus in favor of first‑principles reasoning. In‑person work prioritized (Palo Alto, Seattle, Memphis, London).
- **Benefits**: 
  - Competitive cash + equity compensation.
  - Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, disability, life insurance.
  - 401(k) plan, fertility benefits, flexible vacation.
  - Visa sponsorship offered.
- **Engineering culture**: No recruiters for assessments – applications reviewed directly by technical team. Interview process: application → screening → technical interviews → offer.
- **Mission‑driven**: Opportunity to work on frontier AI models that aim to “advance humanity.”
- **Perks**: In‑person collaboration, fast‑paced environment, ownership of meaningful projects.

## Sources
1. [x.ai/company](https://x.ai/company)
2. [x.ai/careers](https://x.ai/careers)
3. [job-boards.greenhouse.io/xai](https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/xai)
4. [x.ai/news](https://x.ai/news)
5. [x.ai/careers/open-roles](https://x.ai/careers/open-roles)

## Other roles at xAI

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- [Team Lead, Human Data Operations - Post Training](https://feeny.ai/job/team-lead-human-data-operations-post-training-xai-asia-europe-international-us-7mqwd37c5cse) — Asia / Europe / International / US
- [Controls Technician (Physical Infrastructure) - Memphis](https://feeny.ai/job/controls-technician-physical-infrastructure-memphis-xai-southaven-62rxn4p3hs02) — Southaven, MS / Memphis, TN
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