Elon Musk's xAI Is Hiring Engineers for Its Anime 'AI Companions' — With Salaries Up to $440,000 a Year xAI launched a set of "AI companions" earlier this week, with a third on the way.
By Erin Davis
Elon Musk's xAI is hiring two software engineers to develop AI anime "companions," according to a job listing on the company's website. The company is looking for a "Fullstack Engineer - Waifus" and a "Mobile Android Engineer - Waifus" to make "Grok's realtime avatar products the best in the world" — and both pay up to $440,000 in compensation.
According to Dictionary.com, a "waifu" is a "term for a fictional character, usually in anime or related media, that someone has great, and sometimes romantic, affection for." Business Insider notes that earlier this week, xAI released two AI "companions" for Grok, the company's AI platform, and one of the "companions," named "Ani," looks like an anime character. There is also a red panda, "Bad Rudi," who insults users when used, according to NBC News. A third male anime character is on the way.
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According to the company website, xAI's mission is "to create AI systems that can accurately understand the universe and aid humanity in its pursuit of knowledge."
The roles will make "Grok's realtime avatar products fast, scalable, and reliable," according to the postings, and "help push forward audio and gameplay research."
The Fullstack Engineer role is located in the Bay Area, and tech skills needed include: Python, Rust, WebSocket, WebRTC. The interview process begins with a 15-30 minute phone interview with technical questions. After that, there are two other steps: a "deep dive coding challenge" and a meet and greet with the wider team. The salary range is $180,000 to $440,000.
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The Mobile Android Engineer role has the same salary range and also will work on Grok's real-time avatar products, but should have knowledge of Kotlin, Jetpack Compose and the Android View system, Coroutines, Flow, Android Studio, Gradle, Media3 or ExoPlayer, and Rust.
The interview process is also longer: a 15-minute phone interview with basic questions, then 3 technical interviews: a coding assessment in a language of your choice; a systems hands-on demonstrating practical skills in a live problem-solving session; and a project deep-dive presenting your past exceptional work. Finally, a meet and greet with the wider team.
"Our goal is to finish the main process within one week," the post reads. "All interviews will be conducted via Google Meet."
Related: This New AI Startup Led By a Former OpenAI Exec Is Offering $500,000 Salaries
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