Software Engineer, Core Services
Cursor is hiring a Software Engineer, Core Services 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 Little AI ●○○○: aI is not part of the work.
- Tools and skills the posting cites include Grok.
- Level lists 125 other open roles at Cursor.
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 the Core Services team at SpaceXAI, you'll own the critical shared services that sit between our product surfaces and the infrastructure layer: auth, webhooks, and the backend systems that power agent workflows.
SpaceXAI is redefining how developers write code, and your work is what makes that possible at scale. You'll build the systems that every product team depends on, ensuring they are reliable, well-abstracted, and ready for whatever comes next.
Example projects include...
Owning authentication: designing and implementing a scalable auth architecture that secures one of the most widely-used developer tools in the world.
Powering the agent backend: owning the infrastructure behind Cursor's agent workflows, optimizing for end-to-end performance and reliability as agents become central to the developer experience.
Building a robust webhook server: handling high-throughput event delivery with proper retry semantics, dead-letter queues, and observability so external integrations just work.
Hardening SCM integrations: building resilient abstractions over source control providers so Cursor stays rock-solid regardless of third-party conditions.
Driving end-to-end agent reliability: partnering with the client and inference teams to improve the full path from user action to agent response, closing the loop on one of the hardest problems in AI-powered development.
You may be a fit if
You have experience building and operating critical backend services, especially auth systems, API gateways, or webhook infrastructure.
You've worked on agentic products or infrastructure and have strong opinions on reliability and performance of complex multi-step systems.
You care deeply about clean abstractions, well-defined service contracts, and making it easy for other engineers to build on top of your work.
You have strong software engineering fundamentals and enjoy owning the full lifecycle of production services.
Experience with authentication/authorization frameworks (OAuth, JWTs, RBAC), event-driven architectures, or building developer-facing platform services is a plus.
Applying
If there appears to be a fit, we'll reach out to schedule 2-3 short technicals. After, we'll schedule an onsite in our office, where you'll work on a small project, discuss ideas, and meet the team.
#LI-DNI
How we rate this
Software Engineer, Core Services at Cursor rates 9 out of 100 for how much of the daily work is AI. That makes it Little AI (AI Level 1 of 4). The level is about AI in the job, not seniority.
Little AI. AI is not part of the work.
- ●●●● 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.
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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
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