Software Engineer, Research Tooling

About the role

SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today, SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of making life multiplanetary and expanding consciousness to the stars.

SpaceXSI is building Super Intelligence to help humanity understand the universe. Our teams are building the full Super Intelligence stack: from our Colossus supercomputers, to Grok models, to our suite of applications, including Grok Bot, Grok Build, Grok Imagine, Grok Voice, and X. We're creating a powerful flywheel where more compute trains better models, better models power more useful products, and what we learn from people using those products shapes what we build next.

About the role

As a Software Engineer on the Research Tools team, you'll build the infrastructure and applications that enable our researchers to iterate quickly, run complex experiments, and extract insights. This is a full-stack product-engineering role: you'll work directly with researchers and engineers to understand their workflows, identify bottlenecks, and rapidly ship solutions that multiply their productivity.

Whether you're creating platforms for experiment orchestration, developing novel visualization tools for model evaluation, or building abstractions for understanding model behavior at scale, your work will directly accelerate our mission of building frontier AI models. No prior ML or research experience is required.

Responsibilities

• Build and maintain the full-stack applications and infrastructure researchers rely on daily, covering experiment setup, feedback collection, and results analysis
• Own complete product areas from user needs through design, implementation, and iteration, setting standards for how to build research applications
• Create reusable platforms and tools that speed up new research applications, then prototype, ship, and iterate quickly based on real-world usage
• Partner with research teams to turn their workflows and pain points into intuitive interfaces and abstractions that make complex research tasks fast and approachable

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, math, or scientific discipline; OR 2+ years of professional experience building software in lieu of a degree

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Experience building tools, platforms, or infrastructure for technical users (engineers, researchers, data scientists, analysts, etc.)
• Experience shipping full-stack products and owning systems from user interface to storage or services, using technologies such as TypeScript and React alongside Node, Python, or Go
• Experience building dense, data-facing tools such as transcript viewers, diffing systems, review queues, observability products, or operational dashboards, with strong opinions about how structured data should be rendered
• Product instincts: identifying the right problems to solve and moving from concept to working prototype with ease
• Ability to move quickly under ambiguity, collaborate closely with researchers and domain experts, and take open-ended problems from rough need to reliable product
• Ability to jump into new problems, quickly develop domain expertise, and independently drive impactful projects from conception to delivery

Additional Requirements

• Onsite role: must be able to work in person at the Palo Alto office

Compensation and Benefits

The annual compensation range for this role is listed below.

Annual Salary

$140,000 - $225,000 USD

Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience.

Base salary is just one part of our total rewards package at SpaceXSI, which also includes equity, comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short & long-term disability insurance, life insurance, and various other discounts and perks.