X Developer Platform - Forward Deployed Engineer, X API

Job Description

Job Description

ABOUT xAI

xAI'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:

X Developer Platform is responsible for the partner ecosystem of B2B and B2C developers that build solutions using X's extensive API set. With more than 500 million active users and billions of posts per week, X offers robust, real-time and historical data, insights and engagement opportunities across a wide range of organizations and industries. Our API gives you the ability to learn from and engage with the conversation on X and we supply developers with the tools to further uncover, build on, and share the value of this conversation with the world.

Our mission broadly is to achieve the state of X, "The Everything App", and be the clear digital townsquare of Earth. We make our ever-expanding universe of social media data available via our extensive API suite with consistent and reliable architecture so the world can realize the full potential of this amazing stream of information. Our team helps collect, process, enrich and deliver hundreds of billions of signals a day through the X API platform. Our products are highly available, scalable, optimized, respectful of X's user base, and truly essential for our customers who build their businesses on X data.

We are seeking an exceptional Forward Deployed Engineer who will work at the intersection of deep technical implementation and world-class developer experience. In this hands-on role, you will be on the front lines building production solutions for Enterprise customers, creating sample apps for both Enterprise and Indie developers, improving DevEx tools (SDKs, MCPs, CLIs, sandbox environments, and more), and authoring comprehensive how-to-guides — with an emphasis for X API + Agentic/AI use cases and integrations. You are genuinely obsessed with developers, our documentation, and making every X API product super accessible, intuitive, and delightful to build with. You will work directly with customers while collaborating closely with internal product and engineering teams to drive adoption, reduce friction, and maximize long-term value across the entire developer ecosystem.

X Developer API Products Include:

• Real time streaming access to X data
• Historical access to archived X data
• Insight into X engagement data
• Enrichments on X objects derived from the latest machine learning technologies
• Flexible access to aggregate data
• End to end developer experience

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Partner directly with Enterprise customers to understand their business needs and rapidly build production-grade solutions, prototypes, integrations, and accelerators using the X API platform.
• Design, develop, and maintain high-quality sample applications, starter kits, reference implementations, and code examples for both Enterprise teams and Indie developers to accelerate adoption and showcase best practices.
• Build, enhance, and ship developer experience tools such as SDKs, MCPs, CLIs, Sandbox/Test Environments, and other internal/external tooling that dramatically improves developer productivity and ease of use.
• Research, write, and continuously improve comprehensive how-to guides, tutorials, cookbook recipes, technical blogs, and educational content — with special emphasis on X API integrations, real-time data, AI Agents, LLMs, and emerging use cases.
• Obsess over every aspect of developer experience: continuously audit and elevate our documentation, onboarding flows, code samples, and overall accessibility to make X API products the most approachable and powerful in the industry.
• Gather real-world feedback from customers and the broader developer community, advocate passionately for their needs internally, and collaborate with Product and Engineering teams to influence roadmap and feature prioritization.
• Diagnose complex technical issues, bugs, and edge cases; provide expert-level troubleshooting, workarounds, and long-term solutions while turning learnings into public guides and tooling improvements.
• Streamline support processes and create scalable materials that close knowledge gaps and accelerate success for both managed partners and self-serve developers.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• 5+ years of experience in a customer-facing technical role (partner engineering, solutions architecture, developer relations, forward-deployed engineering, or similar) working directly with enterprise customers.
• Write and review production-grade code across frontend and backend (Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, Java, etc.) with a proven track record of shipping production-quality software, sample apps, prototypes, and developer tools.
• Strong understanding of API design principles, REST/GraphQL, real-time streaming systems, authentication, and modern AI/agent workflows.
• Hands-on experience building developer-facing assets: sample applications, reference implementations, DevEx tools, and high-quality technical documentation/guides.
• Deep, genuine passion for developer experience (DevEx) — you instinctively identify friction and love removing it through better docs, tools, and accessible APIs.
• Ability to work comfortably and professionally with diverse stakeholders (software developers, product managers, technical executives, and business leaders) to define and deliver shared objectives.
• Excellent project management skills with the ability to scope, execute, and drive initiatives autonomously in a fast-paced environment.
• Outstanding verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to translate complex technical topics into clear, engaging documentation and presentations.
• Strong attention to detail and a solution-oriented mindset that turns customer problems into scalable improvements.

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Previous experience building or significantly contributing to developer platforms, tools, SDKs, interactive playgrounds, or educational content.
• Hands-on knowledge of AI/Agent frameworks, LLM integrations, or building AI-powered applications on top of data APIs.
• Industry experience in social media, enterprise software, data analytics, real-time/streaming data, or related spaces.
• Strong familiarity with Rust, Scala (ideally), or JVM-based programming languages.
• A public portfolio of sample apps, open-source contributions, technical blogs, guides, or DevEx tools that demonstrate your builder mindset and developer obsession.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

$180,000 - $440,000 USD

Base salary is just one part of our total rewards package at xAI, which also includes equity, comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short & long-term disability insurance, life insurance, and various other discounts and perks.

xAI is an equal opportunity employer. For details on data processing, view our Recruitment Privacy Notice.