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Software Engineer, ML Platform

Cursor is hiring a Software Engineer, ML Platform in San Francisco, United States. Level rates it ; you can apply on Cursor.

Level's read on this job

  • Builds AI ●●●● is how Level rates this software engineer role: the job is building AI systems.
  • Tools and skills the posting cites include Grok, Colossus and distributed systems.
  • Level lists 125 other open roles at Cursor.

AI in this role

Software Engineer building core ML platform infrastructure and systems to support large-scale AI model training and deployment.

grokcolossus
distributed-systemsinfrastructureml-platformobservabilitytelemetry

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 ML Platform at SpaceXAI, you'll build the infrastructure that turns real product usage into better models — and keeps research moving fast on large GPU fleets. ML Platform is organized into four teams. Depending on your background, you may join any of them:

  • Telemetry — Own the collection and serving path that turns real product use into a record research can trust; without slowing the product, and under a small, explicit policy. Client-side or high-volume ingestion experience is a plus.

  • ML Data Platform — Build the shared environments and pipeline substrate researchers extend, so new experiments don’t fork their own stack.

  • Observability — Make it easy for researchers to start, watch, and debug their own runs.

  • ML DevX and Systems — Shorten the path from idea to a trusted run on the research fleet.

We're looking for strong distributed-systems and infrastructure engineers who want to sit next to research and ship platform primitives that move the product.

We're in-person with cozy offices in North Beach, San Francisco, Palo Alto, and Manhattan, New York, complete with well-stocked libraries.

What you’ll do

  • Design, build, and operate core platform systems used daily by ML researchers and product engineers

  • Partner closely with research to turn recurring pain into durable infrastructure

  • Own reliability, performance, and developer experience for the systems in your lane

  • Ship iteratively in a flat, high-ownership environment. Measure impact, then raise the bar

You may be a fit if

  • You have a strong background in systems / infrastructure software engineering and enjoy building platforms other engineers depend on

  • You've owned production distributed systems at meaningful scale (ingestion, data pipelines, scheduling/orchestration, or similar)

  • You're comfortable across Linux, cloud and/or bare metal, and modern orchestration (Kubernetes, Ray, or equivalent)

  • You like working closely with ML researchers and product engineers

  • You thrive where ownership is high and the feedback loop is short

Especially strong backgrounds by team

  • Telemetry: event ingestion, product analytics pipelines, OpenTelemetry / tracing, reliable data APIs

  • Product Data Platform: data frameworks, Spark / Flink / Ray, ML dataset and training-data infrastructure

  • Observability: experiment / run monitoring, debug and eval tooling, agent-friendly observability UX

  • ML DevX and Systems: GPU / cluster scheduling, job queues, node health, research compute developer experience

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.

How we rate this

Software Engineer, ML Platform at Cursor rates 90 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.

Classification

Builds AI. The job is building AI systems.

  1. ●●●● Builds AI80 to 100
  2. ●●●○ Works on AI60 to 79
  3. ●●○○ Uses AI40 to 59
  4. ●○○○ 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

Distributed SystemsInfrastructureML PlatformObservabilityTelemetryGrokColossus

Also common in software engineer jobs at this level

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

  1. Tell me about a project where distributed systems was part of your work. What did you do?
  2. Tell me about a project where infrastructure was part of your work. What did you do?
  3. Tell me about a project where ml platform was part of your work. What did you do?
  4. Tell me about a project where observability was part of your work. What did you do?
  5. Tell me about a project where telemetry was part of your work. What did you do?

Adapt your resume

  • List these exact terms on your resume: Distributed Systems, Infrastructure, ML Platform, Observability, and Telemetry. 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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