{"absolute_url":"https://job-boards.greenhouse.io/xai/jobs/5111374007","data_compliance":[{"type":"gdpr","requires_consent":false,"requires_processing_consent":false,"requires_retention_consent":false,"retention_period":null,"demographic_data_consent_applies":false}],"internal_job_id":4619876007,"location":{"name":"Palo Alto, California"},"metadata":[{"id":22659078007,"name":"Job Description via Google Doc URL [please share with Olivia]","value":"https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zBDutm66-wCQE1Ak3Qnm6WeJryx8SBGgwO8nSAgO7c8/edit?tab=t.0","value_type":"short_text"},{"id":16340689007,"name":"Featured Role","value":null,"value_type":"yes_no"}],"id":5111374007,"updated_at":"2026-08-27T18:09:48-04:00","requisition_id":"898","title":"Member of Technical Staff - Multimodal Understanding","company_name":"SpaceXAI","first_published":"2026-04-17T14:05:41-04:00","language":"en","application_deadline":null,"content":"\u0026lt;div class=\u0026quot;content-intro\u0026quot;\u0026gt;\u0026lt;p\u0026gt;\u0026lt;span style=\u0026quot;font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\u0026quot;\u0026gt;SpaceXAI’s mission is to create AI systems that can accurately understand the universe and aid humanity in its pursuit of knowledge.\u0026amp;nbsp;\u0026lt;/span\u0026gt;\u0026lt;span style=\u0026quot;font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\u0026quot;\u0026gt;Our team is small, highly motivated, and focused on engineering excellence. This organization is for individuals who appreciate challenging themselves and thrive on curiosity. \u0026lt;/span\u0026gt;\u0026lt;span style=\u0026quot;font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\u0026quot;\u0026gt;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. \u0026lt;/span\u0026gt;\u0026lt;span style=\u0026quot;font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif;\u0026quot;\u0026gt;All employees are expected to have strong communication skills. They should be able to concisely and accurately share knowledge with their teammates.\u0026lt;/span\u0026gt;\u0026lt;/p\u0026gt;\u0026lt;/div\u0026gt;\u0026lt;h3\u0026gt;\u0026lt;strong\u0026gt;ABOUT THE ROLE:\u0026lt;/strong\u0026gt;\u0026lt;/h3\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;p\u0026gt;You will join the multimodal team to push toward superhuman multimodal intelligence. Advance understanding and generation across modalities—image, video, audio, and text—spanning the full stack: data curation/acquisition, tokenizer training, large-scale pre-training, post-training/alignment, infrastructure/scaling, evaluation, tooling/demos, and end-to-end product experiences.\u0026lt;/p\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;p\u0026gt;Collaborate cross-functionally with pre-training, post-training, reasoning, data, applied, and product teams to deliver frontier capabilities in multimodal reasoning, world modeling, tool use, agentic behaviors, and interactive human-AI collaboration. Contribute to building models that can see, hear, reason about, and interact with the world in real time at unprecedented levels.\u0026lt;/p\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;h3\u0026gt;\u0026lt;strong\u0026gt;RESPONSIBILITIES:\u0026lt;/strong\u0026gt;\u0026lt;/h3\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;ul\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Design, build, and optimize large-scale distributed systems for multimodal pre-training, post-training, inference, data processing, and tokenization at web/petabyte scale.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Develop high-throughput pipelines for data acquisition, preprocessing, filtering, generation, decoding, loading, crawling, visualization, and management (images, videos, audio + text).\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Advance multimodal capabilities including spatial-temporal compression, cross-modal alignment, world modeling, reasoning, emergent abilities, audio/image/video understanding \u0026amp;amp; generation, real-time video processing, and noisy data handling.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Drive data quality and studies: curation (human/synthetic), filtering techniques, analysis, and scalable pipelines to support trillion-parameter models.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Create evaluation frameworks, internal benchmarks, reward models, and metrics that capture real-world usage, failure modes, interactive dynamics, and human-AI synergy.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Innovate on algorithms, modeling approaches, hardware/software/algorithm co-design, and scaling paradigms for state-of-the-art performance.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Build research tooling, user-friendly interfaces, prototypes/demos, full-stack applications, and enable rapid iteration based on feedback.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Work across the stack (pre-training → SFT/RL/post-training) to enable reasoning, tool calling, agentic behaviors, orchestration, and seamless real-time interactions.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;/ul\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;h3\u0026gt;\u0026lt;strong\u0026gt;BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:\u0026lt;/strong\u0026gt;\u0026lt;/h3\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;ul\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Hands-on experience with multimodal pre-training, post-training, or fine-tuning (vision, audio, video, or cross-modal).\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Expert-level proficiency in Python (core language), with strong experience in at least one of: JAX / PyTorch / XLA.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Proven track record building or optimizing large-scale distributed ML systems (training/inference optimization, GPU utilization, multi-GPU/TPU setups, hardware co-design).\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Deep experience designing and running data pipelines at scale: curation, filtering, generation, quality studies, especially for noisy/real-world multimodal data.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Strong fundamentals in evaluation design, benchmarks, reward modeling, or RL techniques (particularly for interactive/agentic behaviors).\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Proactive self-starter who thrives in high-intensity environments and is passionate about pushing multimodal AI frontiers.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Willingness to own end-to-end initiatives and do whatever it takes to deliver breakthrough user experiences.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;/ul\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;h3\u0026gt;PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:\u0026lt;/h3\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;ul\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Experience leading major improvements in model capabilities through better data, modeling, algorithms, or scaling.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Familiarity with state-of-the-art in multimodal LLMs, scaling laws, tokenizers, compression techniques, reasoning, or agentic systems.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Proficiency in Rust and/or C++ for performance-critical components.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Hands-on work with large-scale orchestration tools such as Spark, Ray, or Kubernetes.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Background building full-stack tooling: performant interfaces, real-time research demos/apps, or end-to-end product ownership.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;li\u0026gt;Passion for end-to-end user experience in interactive, real-time multimodal AI systems.\u0026lt;/li\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;/ul\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;h3\u0026gt;\u0026lt;strong\u0026gt;COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:\u0026lt;/strong\u0026gt;\u0026lt;/h3\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;p\u0026gt;$180,000 - $440,000 USD\u0026lt;/p\u0026gt;\n\u0026lt;p class=\u0026quot;p1\u0026quot;\u0026gt;Base salary is just one part of our total rewards package at SpaceXAI, which also includes equity, comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short \u0026amp;amp; long-term disability insurance, life insurance, and various other discounts and perks.\u0026lt;/p\u0026gt;\u0026lt;div class=\u0026quot;content-conclusion\u0026quot;\u0026gt;\u0026lt;p\u0026gt;\u0026lt;em\u0026gt;SpaceXAI is an equal opportunity employer. For details on data processing, view our \u0026lt;/em\u0026gt;\u0026lt;em\u0026gt;\u0026lt;a href=\u0026quot;https://x.ai/legal/recruitment-privacy-notice\u0026quot; target=\u0026quot;_blank\u0026quot;\u0026gt;Recruitment Privacy Notice\u0026lt;/a\u0026gt;.\u0026lt;/em\u0026gt;\u0026lt;/p\u0026gt;\u0026lt;/div\u0026gt;","departments":[{"id":4064383007,"name":"Model","child_ids":[],"parent_id":4024733007}],"offices":[{"id":4035106007,"name":"Palo Alto, CA","location":"Palo Alto, California","child_ids":[],"parent_id":4054926007}],"ai_disclaimer":null,"include_ai_disclaimer":null,"ai_opt_out_request_url":null}