About the role
SpaceXAI’s mission is to create AI systems that can accurately understand the universe and aid humanity in its pursuit of knowledge. Our team is small, highly motivated, and focused on engineering excellence. This organization is for individuals who appreciate challenging themselves and thrive on curiosity. 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. All employees are expected to have strong communication skills. They should be able to concisely and accurately share knowledge with their teammates.
ABOUT
THE ROLE: As the Hardware Deployment Engineer Lead, you will own the end-to-end bring-up of GPU compute hardware across the world's largest AI training clusters. You will build and lead a dedicated in-house hardware deployment team responsible for L11 integration, hardware bring-up, and post-L11 repair of GB300-class systems across multiple data halls concurrently. Your team's throughput directly determines how fast xAI can compute online — this is one of the most critical path activities in the company. You will set the deployment playbook, hold hardware vendors accountable to SLAs, and institutionalize processes so that cluster deployment is limited only by hardware supply and power, never by deployment velocity. The position is based in Memphis, TN.
RESPONSIBILITIES: Lead, hire, and develop a dedicated hardware deployment team (deployment engineers, deployment technicians, and repair technicians) with full ownership of team structure and staffing. Own L11 rack integration and compute hardware bring-up across multiple data halls concurrently, from delivery dock to healthy production handoff. Drive aggressive bring-up timelines: achieve 95%+ node availability within days of rack delivery and 100% closure within one week per data hall. Own post-L11 hardware health: run systematic health pushes to sustain greater than 98% node availability prior to turnover to operations. Internalize non-RMA hardware repairs to maximize hardware recovery, minimize repair backlogs, and reduce dependence on OEM turnaround times. Develop and enforce vendor SLAs for OEM and supplier