Software Engineer - Media

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

About the role

We’re looking for exceptional media engineers who want to join us on a new project to deeply integrate xAI’s advanced AI infrastructure into a platform used by around 600 million users every month. We’re bringing xAI’s technology stack and using it to transform the video product experience - video playback, live streaming, Spaces, audio/video calls, and more. This is your chance to contribute in a major way while leveraging all of the powerful AI tools and talented colleagues at xAI. 

What You'll Do

• Build the next generation of large-scale video services 
• Contribute to and rebuild core media processing and distribution pipelines in high-performance languages (Rust, C++ or Go)
• Obsess over every millisecond and pixel,  ensuring end-to-end media quality and performance at scale across a rich suite of products and user platforms

Who You Are

• Have at least 5 years of experience
• Obsessed with media quality, performance, and product experience
• Proficient in high performance C++ or Go
• In-depth knowledge of either WebRTC or LL-HLS or video transcoding pipelines
• Familiar with building and running scalable and resilient distributed systems

Tech Stack 

Go, C++, Rust, Java, Scala

Kubernetes, FoundationDB, ValKey, Envoy, S3

H.264, H.265, AV1, MP4, CMAF, VMAF, RTP, RTMP, LL-HLS, HDR, DRM

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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