Software Engineer, Compute Infra
Cursor is hiring a Software Engineer, Compute Infra in San Francisco, United States. Level rates it ; you can apply on Cursor.
Level's read on this job
- On Level's scale, this software engineer role is Builds AI ●●●●: the job is building AI systems.
- The posting mentions Grok among its tools and skills.
- Level classes it as a mid-level role.
- Cursor has 130 other open roles on Level.
- Posted in the last few days.
AI in this 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 Compute Infra at SpaceXAI, you'll build the sandbox infrastructure to give every agent their own VM. These VMs power coding agents, Grok Bot, reinforcement learning, and more. We operate one of the largest set of sandbox clusters in the world, at millions of CPU cores, across third- and first-party datacenters. You’ll own developing a cloud for agents, including the virtualization layer (Firecracker and Cloud Hypervisor microVMs), control plane scaling, and the networking/connectivity layer on top.
Responsibilities
Rearchitecting the control plane / scheduler to support 1 million concurrent VMs per cluster.
Building a ublk block device that can dedupe, lazy load, and efficiently snapshot VM data.
Designing an egress proxy and network isolation to securely filter, monitor, and route agent traffic.
Designing resilient systems that can operate across a mixture of cloud and on-premise datacenters.
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
You have deep experience with building compute orchestration (e.g. Kubernetes, Mesos).
You have built and operated large fleets of VMs / isolated sandboxes.
You have experience with the Linux kernel and virtualization technologies.
You enjoy thinking about infrastructure primitives that future agents will require.
How we rate this
Software Engineer, Compute Infra at Cursor rates 86 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Builds AI (AI Level 4 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.
- ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
- ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
- ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
- ●○○○ Little AI0 to 39
Levels come from how often the tools, models and workflows of the role are named in the posting itself. Read the description and count the AI tools, models and workflows it names.
Prepare for this job
Built from this posting and from similar jobs on Level.
Skills and AI tools this role asks for
Pay
- Typical software engineer job
- $168k
This posting doesn't list pay. Use the typical software engineer figure when pay comes up. See software engineer jobs
Questions you could be asked
- What's a project where you used Grok hands-on?
- How would you decide a model or AI system is ready to ship?
- Tell me about a time a model underperformed in production. How did you find out, and what did you change?
Adapt your resume
- List these exact terms on your resume: Grok. An applicant tracking system matches the wording, not the idea.
- Attach one line of real, concrete experience to at least one of them. A tool named with nothing behind it rarely survives a human read.
- Lead with what you built, trained or shipped. This role is judged on the AI system itself, not the tools around it.
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