Software Engineer - MacOS

xAI•Palo Alto, CA

2d•Onsite

About The Position

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. We’re seeking exceptionally talented engineers to build high-performance Mac applications that deliver seamless and intuitive user experiences. You’ll play a large role on a small team pushing the boundaries of what is possible with cutting-edge Swift-based development, with a particular focus on macOS-native features and user interfaces.

Requirements

Swift (required)
AppKit and macOS APIs (e.g., Core Data, Core Animation) (required)
SwiftUI (required)
Xcode
Objective-C
Cloud platforms or on-prem environments
Technically Exceptional : Engineering is your craft and you operate at the very highest level regardless of the stack.
Impatient: You’re excited about the mission of your work, and treat every project like you wish it had been completed yesterday.
Perfectionist: You take pride in crafting the most delightful experiences for customers, and are determined to polish every last splinter from the product.
High Agency : You don’t wait for direction, and are capable of completing large projects end to end on your own.
Product Minded : You are excited to research and build applications in order to deliver exceptional, newly enabled product experiences to customers at scale.

Nice To Haves

A proven track record of building SOTA Mac applications end to end alone or as part of small teams
Shipping high-performance desktop applications across a variety of devices and platforms
Track record of releases, publications, and/or open source projects related to SwiftUI, AppKit, and macOS
Strong systems and engineering skills in development frameworks like Swift, Rust, and adjacent

Responsibilities

Develop and optimize Swift-based Mac applications at scale.
Build infrastructure for large-scale data pipelines, asset management, and UI prototyping.
Develop and implement quantitative evaluations for application performance, usability, and reliability.
Optimization and code refinement for real-time responsiveness.
Develop and implement strategies for handling complex, long-running tasks in macOS environments.
Maintain a deep focus on building a lovable user experience everywhere from prototyping to deployment.