ZipRecruiter
Storage Systems Engineer - Supercomputing
ZipRecruiter, Palo Alto, California, United States, 94306
Job DescriptionJob DescriptionAbout 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
As a Storage Systems Engineer on xAI's Supercomputing team, you will design, build, and optimize high-performance storage systems to support some of the world's largest GPU supercomputing clusters. These clusters power both AI training workloads and inference, requiring extreme reliability, scalability, and low-latency data access.
Focus
Architect and implement distributed storage solutions tailored for massive AI workloads, ensuring seamless integration with compute infrastructure.
Optimize storage performance for high-throughput and low-latency access, leveraging cutting-edge hardware (NVMe, SSD) and software (Ceph, ZFS).
Collaborate with infrastructure teams to enhance deployment pipelines using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) best practices, ensuring robust and secure storage delivery.
Monitor and maintain storage systems across on-premise clusters and cloud environments, proactively addressing bottlenecks and failures.
Contribute to capacity planning and data durability strategies to support xAI's growing computational needs.
Ideal Experience
Designing and operating distributed storage systems (e.g., Ceph, Lustre, or ZFS) at scale for high-performance computing (HPC) or AI workloads.
Hands-on experience with storage hardware (NVMe, SSD, HDD) and tuning I/O performance in compute-intensive environments.
Writing scalable, high-performance code in Rust or Go for storage-related applications or tooling.
Managing storage infrastructure with IaC tools like Pulumi, Terraform, or Ansible.
Familiarity with Kubernetes storage primitives (e.g., Persistent Volumes, CSI drivers) and integrating storage with containerized workloads.
Bonus: Experience with AI/ML data pipelines, including handling large datasets for training and inference.
Tech Stack
Kubernetes
Pulumi
Rust and Go
Ceph, ZFS, Minio, S3, GCS, or similar distributed storage systems
NVMe, SSD, and HDD storage technologies
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 insurance, life insurance, and various other discounts and perks.
Annual Salary Range
$180,000 - $440,000 USD
xAI is an equal opportunity employer.
California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) Notice
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
As a Storage Systems Engineer on xAI's Supercomputing team, you will design, build, and optimize high-performance storage systems to support some of the world's largest GPU supercomputing clusters. These clusters power both AI training workloads and inference, requiring extreme reliability, scalability, and low-latency data access.
Focus
Architect and implement distributed storage solutions tailored for massive AI workloads, ensuring seamless integration with compute infrastructure.
Optimize storage performance for high-throughput and low-latency access, leveraging cutting-edge hardware (NVMe, SSD) and software (Ceph, ZFS).
Collaborate with infrastructure teams to enhance deployment pipelines using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) best practices, ensuring robust and secure storage delivery.
Monitor and maintain storage systems across on-premise clusters and cloud environments, proactively addressing bottlenecks and failures.
Contribute to capacity planning and data durability strategies to support xAI's growing computational needs.
Ideal Experience
Designing and operating distributed storage systems (e.g., Ceph, Lustre, or ZFS) at scale for high-performance computing (HPC) or AI workloads.
Hands-on experience with storage hardware (NVMe, SSD, HDD) and tuning I/O performance in compute-intensive environments.
Writing scalable, high-performance code in Rust or Go for storage-related applications or tooling.
Managing storage infrastructure with IaC tools like Pulumi, Terraform, or Ansible.
Familiarity with Kubernetes storage primitives (e.g., Persistent Volumes, CSI drivers) and integrating storage with containerized workloads.
Bonus: Experience with AI/ML data pipelines, including handling large datasets for training and inference.
Tech Stack
Kubernetes
Pulumi
Rust and Go
Ceph, ZFS, Minio, S3, GCS, or similar distributed storage systems
NVMe, SSD, and HDD storage technologies
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 insurance, life insurance, and various other discounts and perks.
Annual Salary Range
$180,000 - $440,000 USD
xAI is an equal opportunity employer.
California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) Notice