Elon Musk's xAI is hiring an 'elite unit of engineers'; applicants should be those who 'even as a kid ...'

Elon Musk has joined the high-stakes ‘war for talent’ with Facebook-parent Meta, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI, among others. The Tesla CEO is said to be taking a personal interest in recruitment for his artificial intelligence (AI) startup, xAI. The company has announced that it is hiring a “small, elite unit” of talent engineers who will be tasked with a single mission: finding and hiring the “absolute best people in the world.”

According to a job posting, the new team will report directly to Musk. It also outlines an unconventional profile for the ideal candidate. Musk isn't looking for traditional recruiters; he is looking for engineers who happen to be “people persons”, and successful applicants should have a history of building “cool products” that dates back to their childhood.

Here’s what the xAI job posting says, location, salary on offer and all the other details

About the team

• Talent Engineering is a new team focused on recruiting with a first-principles and engineering mindset.
• This is a small, elite unit reporting directly to Elon.
• The team works closely with both engineering and recruiting teams to create novel approaches for rapidly scaling the hiring of exceptional people.

Who are you

• You believe assembling high-performance teams is an engineering problem.
• You love being around exceptional people and they love being around you.
• You are a nerdy engineer at heart, but your friends believe you are a “people person”
• You’ve built cool products yourself, even as a kid—perhaps personal projects, open-source contributions, or innovative hacks that demonstrate your technical creativity.
• You’ve worked at organizations with incredible talent density. And you referred in great people, and helped with recruiting.
• You might not be hands-on coding every day, but you’re comfortable with "vibe coding" and can quickly grasp technical concepts to evaluate candidates.

About the Role

• For any hiring need at xAI, start by asking: “Who are the absolute best people in the world for this role?” Your focus will be on developing systems to effectively identify, engage, and attract those individuals.
• Once you develop the system you are also expected to execute and the hiring end to end yourself.
• We recognize that identifying the “best people” rarely happens solely on LinkedIn; instead, it occurs through referrals, networking at events, hosting competitions, leveraging specific online communities, and other creative channels.
• You are expected to exercise strong judgment and an intuitive understanding of what excellence looks like across various technical and non-technical domains.

Interview Process

• Submit application
• 30-min intro call with a talent engineer
• Presentation
• Final team onsite

Our goal is to complete the process within two weeks. All interviews will be conducted in person when applicable.Annual Salary Range$120,000 - $240,000 USDBenefitsBase 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.