High-Performance Networking Engineer - Supercomputing

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.

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.

About the Role

High-Performance Networking Engineer on xAI’s Supercomputing team, you will design and optimize low-latency, high-bandwidth networking solutions using NVIDIA’s RDMA-capable technologies to support some of the world’s largest GPU supercomputing clusters. These clusters drive AI training and inference workloads, demanding cutting-edge performance and scalability.

Focus

• Develop and tune RDMA-based communication systems leveraging NVIDIA GPUs and Mellanox NICs (InfiniBand, RoCE) for ultra-fast data transfer between nodes.
• Implement and optimize GPUDirect RDMA to enable direct memory access between GPUs and network interfaces, minimizing CPU overhead.
• Integrate RDMA solutions with Kubernetes-based workloads, ensuring seamless operation across distributed compute and storage systems.
• Collaborate with AI researchers and infrastructure teams to accelerate data pipelines and collective communications using NCCL and MPI.
• Troubleshoot and resolve performance bottlenecks in high-throughput, low-latency networking environments.

Ideal Experience

• Hands-on experience with NVIDIA RDMA technologies (e.g., GPUDirect RDMA, RoCE, InfiniBand) in HPC or AI supercomputing environments.
• Proficiency in programming with Rust, C, or C++ for low-level networking and system optimization.
• Familiarity with NVIDIA’s networking stack, including Mellanox drivers, libraries (e.g., libibverbs), and tools (e.g., NVPeerMemory).
• Experience optimizing distributed systems with MPI, NCCL, or similar frameworks for GPU-accelerated workloads.
• Knowledge of Kubernetes networking and integrating RDMA into containerized environments.
• Bonus: Background in AI/ML training workflows and their networking demands (e.g., large-scale parameter synchronization).

Tech Stack

• NVIDIA GPUs and Mellanox networking (InfiniBand, RoCE)
• RDMA protocols (e.g., GPUDirect RDMA, RoCEv2)
• Kubernetes
• Rust and C/C++
• MPI (Message Passing Interface) and NCCL (NVIDIA Collective Communications Library)

Annual Salary Range

$180,000 - $440,000 USD

xAI is an equal opportunity employer and does not unlawfully discriminate based on race, color, religion, ethnicity, ancestry, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, gender expression, age, disability, medical conditions, genetic information, marital status, military or veteran status, or any other applicable legally protected characteristics. 

Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all applicable federal, state, and local laws, including the San Francisco Fair Chance Ordinance, Los Angeles County Fair Chance Ordinance for Employers, and the California Fair Chance Act. 

For Los Angeles County (unincorporated) Candidates:

xAI reasonably believes that criminal history may have a direct, adverse and negative relationship on the following job duties, potentially resulting in the withdrawal of a conditional offer of employment: 

• Access to information technology systems and confidential information, including proprietary and trade secret information, and/or user data;
• Interacting with internal and/or external clients and colleagues; and
• Exercising sound judgment.

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