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xAI is seeking a Rack Design Engineer to join its Data Center Engineering team, which designs training and inference compute clusters from first principles. The team operates as a highly cross-disciplinary group of mechanical, electrical, optical, and software engineers focused on maximizing efficiency, reliability, and deployment speed of terrestrial computing infrastructure.
As a Rack Design Engineer, you will own the rack as a complete product, from initial concept through production. Your responsibilities include:
• Design mechanical, structural, and integration aspects of high-density AI compute racks, chassis, frames, busbars, manifolds, and cable/fiber raceways
• Integrate compute, networking, power distribution, and liquid cooling into buildable, serviceable, high-yield rack architectures
• Design for in-house manufacturing, including DFM/DFA, fixtures, work instructions, incoming inspection, first articles, and production ramp
• Close thermal, structural, and power constraints in collaboration with cooling, electrical, optical, and network teams at the cluster level
• Drive vendor and in-house parts from concept to qualified production (sheet metal, extrusions, busbar, manifolds, cable management, rack accessories)
• Participate in prototype and production builds on the factory floor: debug fit, leaks, cable dress, airflow/liquid balance, and service time; iterate designs same-day
• Produce and maintain CAD, BOMs, drawings, and build documentation for volume manufacturing
• Support cluster deployment and first-site bring-up, feeding learnings into next-generation hardware
• Partner with network, optical, electrical, and firmware teams to deploy custom compute for inference and training across SpaceX programs
The organization operates with a flat structure where all employees are hands-on contributors. You will be expected to work extended hours and weekends as needed to support design releases, line bring-up, and cluster deployments. Travel to manufacturing and datacenter sites is required. Physical capability to lift up to 25 lbs. unassisted and work around active factory and datacenter hardware is necessary.
REQUIREMENTS:
Basic Qualifications:
• Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, or related engineering discipline
• 2+ years of professional experience designing electromechanical hardware that was built and shipped (internship and project experience counts if hardware was physically produced)
Preferred Skills and Experience:
• Ownership of rack, chassis, or similarly dense electromechanical products through prototype and production
• Experience with ethernet switching, networking, interconnects, and high power distribution
• CAD fluency in SolidWorks, Creo, or NX with ability to produce released drawings shops and factories can build from
• AI/HPC/GPU rack design experience (NVIDIA HGX/GB-class, custom OCP, or equivalent high-power liquid-cooled compute)
• Liquid cooling design expertise (cold plates, manifolds, CDUs, quick disconnects, leak detection, coolant compatibility)
• High-power rack electrical integration (busbar, PDU, 48V, high-current 3-phase, grounding, service safety)
• Cable and fiber physical design inside racks (MPO/OSFP dress, bend radius, service loops) in partnership with optical and network engineers
• Experience transitioning racks from NPI to in-house manufacturing (fixtures, cycle time, poka-yoke, rework loops)
• Thermal and structural analysis (CFD, FEA) applied to design decisions
• Background at high-velocity hardware organizations (AI/GPU cloud, custom compute, OEM/ODM teams with end-to-end product ownership)
• Comfort in factory or datacenter build environments, including first articles, yield, and hardware debug on the floor
