Software Engineer - Evals

xAI•Palo Alto, CA

About The Position

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. You will own and elevate our mission-critical research platform that directly accelerates xAI’s frontier work. The evals team creates and executes instruments for measuring model capabilities and behaviors. These instruments are used to clean datasets, provide feedback for experiments, and track growth throughout training. The evals team also diagnoses why agents fail and how to make improvements both short and long term. We manage the execution infrastructure, design data sets and grading schemes. You will design, build, and ship delightful and bulletproof systems that engineers love to use every day. This role values a strong attention to details, first principles reasoning, and great taste.

Requirements

Software engineering proficiency and 3+ years of experience actively writing code.
A track record of shipping high quality projects and a strong sense of urgency.
Exceptional product taste - you have a sharp sense for what “good” looks like in outputs, and you can translate fuzzy notions of quality, helpfulness, truthfulness, and safety into concrete, measurable criteria.
Strong attention to detail.
Strong communication skills.
Work ethic and strong prioritization skills.

Nice To Haves

Previously founded a startup or joined a fast-growing early-stage startup.
Familiarity with AI/ML workflows, annotation tools, or evals.
Experience creating and maintaining component libraries, design systems, or internal tools.

Responsibilities

Own and elevate our mission-critical research platform that directly accelerates xAI’s frontier work.
Create and execute instruments for measuring model capabilities and behaviors.
Use instruments to clean datasets, provide feedback for experiments, and track growth throughout training.
Diagnose why agents fail and how to make improvements both short and long term.
Manage the execution infrastructure, design data sets and grading schemes.
Design, build, and ship delightful and bulletproof systems that engineers love to use every day.