LOADS & DYNAMICS ENGINEER (STARSHIELD)
Starshield leverages SpaceX’s Starlink technology and launch capability to support national security efforts. While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for government use, with an initial focus on earth observation, communications, and hosted payloads.

In this role, you will work closely with Starshield responsible engineers as well as the Falcon dynamics team to drive hardware and mission design decisions and the reliable operation of Starshield satellites. This role will involve performing dynamic analysis, contributing to in-house codes, as well as hands-on testing. You will be responsible for all low- and high- frequency loads and vibration for the satellites during ground transportation, ascent/launch, and on-orbit operation. Strong candidates for this role will have excellent hardware intuition as well as experience with frequency-domain signal processing and analysis.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Resolve dynamics problems through analysis and test
• Execute dynamic testing from start-to-finish including pre-test analysis, sensor selection & installation, testing, data analysis, signal processing and model correlation
• Build finite element models and run coupled loads analysis
• Perform analyses using commercial and in-house codes as well as write new code
• Perform other analyses as required such as satellite dispense, on-orbit jitter, fatigue analysis, etc.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor's degree in physics, mathematics, or an engineering discipline
• 1+ years of professional experience with dynamics

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Hands-on experience either analyzing data or building hardware
• Experience with vibration and shock testing
• Experience with NASTRAN
• Finite element modeling experience (use of FEMAP)
• Working knowledge of structural analysis and test, including a fundamental understanding of strength, stability and fatigue failure mechanisms
• Excellent oral and written communication skills

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Ability to work long hours and weekends as necessary to support critical milestones 

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:    

Pay Range:    
Loads and Dynamics Engineer/Level I: $100,000.00 - $115,000.00/per year    
Loads and Dynamics Engineer/Level II: $110,000.00 - $135,000.00/per year    

Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience.

Base salary is just one part of your total rewards package at SpaceX. You may also be eligible for long-term incentives, in the form of company stock, stock options, or long-term cash awards, as well as potential discretionary bonuses and the ability to purchase additional stock at a discount through an Employee Stock Purchase Plan. You will also receive access to comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short & long-term disability insurance, life insurance, paid parental leave, and various other discounts and perks. You may also accrue 3 weeks of paid vacation & will be eligible for 10 or more paid holidays per year. Employees accrue paid sick leave pursuant to Company policy which satisfies or exceeds the accrual, carryover, and use requirements of the law. Employees accrue paid sick leave pursuant to Company policy which satisfies or exceeds the accrual, carryover, and use requirements of the law.

SOFTWARE ENGINEER (SPECIAL PROJECTS) - TOP SECRET CLEARANCE

As a Software Engineer on the Special Projects team of the Falcon and Dragon Engineering organization, you will design and implement software and firmware for the next generation of avionics systems at SpaceX. You will be responsible for ensuring your system behaves as expected and troubleshoot when necessary. You will have a direct impact on our ability to launch SpaceX systems frequently, safely, and reliably.

Aerospace experience is not required to be successful here - we want our engineers to bring fresh ideas from all areas. We look for engineers who love solving problems and seek to make an impact on an inspiring mission. As we expand this team, we're looking for versatile, motivated, and collaborative engineers. Our team is involved in designing the vehicle systems at every phase of development. Our software engineers are responsible for the life cycle of the software they create, including development, testing, and operational support.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Design and deliver high-quality software and firmware for common processors and micro-controllers
• Support launch operations
• Collaborate with peers and customers
• Bring up and validate devices that communicate-to and fly-in space
• Analyze test results and bugs which require in-depth investigations
• Hands-on integration and troubleshooting of flight hardware/software systems
• Work in a dynamic environment with changing needs, requirements, and challenges

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, data science, engineering, math, physics, or scientific discipline; OR 2+ years of professional experience in writing software in lieu of a degree
• 1+ years of experience in software development with C++ or C languages
• Active Top Secret, Top Secret SCI, or DOE Level Q clearance

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Development experience with microcontrollers
• Strong software engineering fundamentals in C++
• Solid fundamental knowledge of computer architecture and networks
• Familiarity with NXP microcontrollers
• Commitment to high standard of software development, including adherence to software process and best practices
• Linux and bash shell scripting
• Understanding of verification methodologies
• Excellent communication & documentation skills, and ability to collaborate in multidisciplinary environments

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Must be available to work extended hours and weekends when needed to meet critical deadlines
• This position requires successfully obtaining and maintaining a Top Secret Security Clearance as a condition of employment. While the clearance may not be immediately necessary upon hire, we encourage you to initiate the application process promptly upon accepting this offer. Your ability to secure the necessary clearance is essential for fulfilling key responsibilities of the role. Should you be unable to obtain it, SpaceX reserves the right to modify or terminate your employment to align with operational needs.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:    
Pay Range:    
Software Engineer/Level I: $125,000.00 - $145,000.00/per year    
Software Engineer/Level II: $145,000.00 - $175,000.00/per year
    
Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience.

Base salary is just one part of your total rewards package at SpaceX. You may also be eligible for long-term incentives, in the form of company stock, stock options, or long-term cash awards, as well as potential discretionary bonuses and the ability to purchase additional stock at a discount through an Employee Stock Purchase Plan. You will also receive access to comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short and long-term disability insurance, life insurance, paid parental leave, and various other discounts and perks. You may also accrue 3 weeks of paid vacation and will be eligible for 10 or more paid holidays per year. Employees accrue paid sick leave pursuant to Company policy which satisfies or exceeds the accrual, carryover, and use requirements of the law.   

SOFTWARE ENGINEER (VEHICLE ENGINEERING)

Be a member of the Artificial Intelligence Software Engineering team, focusing on solving complex data problems for our launch vehicles and spacecraft.

Our team is creating AI systems to accelerate software development and testing, avionics design, flight data review, logistics, and mission operations. Your work will directly support the world's largest satellite constellation, accelerate rapid reuse of the Falcon launch vehicle, and contribute to the development of the world's largest rocket capable of sending humans to Mars.

The role will consist of utilizing existing AI technologies and developing in-house solutions and processes to safely use AI. You will be responsible for working with a diverse set of technologies including setting up Large Language Models (LLMs) with Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), training internal models on SpaceX data, using Machine Learning (ML) to intelligently extract knowledge hidden in time-series data and developing new technologies to help engineers rapidly design and test space hardware including electronics and propulsion systems. The team will work closely with engineers throughout the company to create new AI systems to unlock engineering bottlenecks and transform how engineering data is accessed and used at SpaceX.

Aerospace experience is not required to be successful here - rather, we look for smart, motivated, collaborative engineers who love solving problems and want to make an impact on an inspiring mission. You will have full ownership of challenging problems and work with a team of enthusiastic engineers to design and produce AI solutions that enable SpaceX to move towards our goals at a rapid pace.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Develop highly reliable and scalable artificial intelligence pipelines to empower engineers across all SpaceX departments
• Create new AI applications that will revolutionize day to day operations for engineers at SpaceX
• Build AI driven data review tools
• Collaborate with peers on architecture, design, and code reviews
• Build prototypes to prove out key AI design concepts and quantify technical constraints
• Own all aspects of AI software engineering and product development from initial prototyping
• Deep dive into engineering problems to find efficient AI solutions
• Develop security policies to protect data and user based policies to develop robust AI standards
• Ensure that AI systems are properly vetted to ensure accurate and reliable output

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, data science, engineering, math or physics; OR 4+ years of professional experience building software in lieu of a degree
• 1+ years of experience in AI software engineering, full stack development, and data science

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Programming experience in Python, C++, or similar languages
• Building LLM RAG pipelines in LlamaIndex or similar
• Experience fine tuning LLM models
• Experience building complex Agentic workflows
• Experience training ML models for computer vision systems
• Experience working with AI systems and Machine learning and tools such as PyTorch, Tensorflow, or similar
• Experience with relational databases, non-relational databases, vector databases, PostgreSQL, Qdrant, or similar
• Experience Deploying containerized applications systems using Docker and Kubernetes
• Experience developing on Linux systems
• Good understanding of version control, testing, continuous integration, build, deployment and monitoring
• Front-end experience in React, or similar JavaScript framework
• Good understanding of statistics, machine learning algorithms and frameworks

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS: 

• Must be available to work extended hours and weekends when needed to meet critical deadlines

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

Pay range:
Software Engineer/Level I: $125,000.00 - $150,000.00/per year
Software Engineer/Level II: $145,000.00 - $175,000.00/per year

Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience.

Base salary is just one part of your total rewards package at SpaceX. You may also be eligible for long-term incentives, in the form of company stock, stock options, or long-term cash awards, as well as potential discretionary bonuses and the ability to purchase additional stock at a discount through an Employee Stock Purchase Plan. You will also receive access to comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short and long-term disability insurance, life insurance, paid parental leave, and various other discounts and perks. You may also accrue 3 weeks of paid vacation and will be eligible for 10 or more paid holidays per year. Employees accrue paid sick leave pursuant to Company policy which satisfies or exceeds the accrual, carryover, and use requirements of the law.

SITE RELIABILITY ENGINEER, GNC

SpaceX’s mission is to make humanity multiplanetary by developing fully and rapidly reusable launch systems capable of launching Starship multiple times per day while continuing to scale the Starlink constellation. To support these goals, we are seeking a Site Reliability Engineer to operate and scale custom-built, mission-critical products for the Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) teams.

GNC teams at SpaceX are responsible for vehicle design, trajectory design and optimization, high-fidelity vehicle simulation, software and control algorithm development, while also supporting both launch and on-orbit operations across multiple vehicle programs. In this role, you will work closely with GNC teams across SpaceX to maintain and improve a suite of critical GNC-focused tools and infrastructure that must scale reliably to enable a multiplanetary future. These systems include on-prem services, large-scale Monte Carlo simulations on our high-performance computing (HPC) cluster, automated data analysis pipelines, continuous integration systems for rocket and simulation software, GNC analysis infrastructure, and vehicle configuration verification tools.

The ideal candidate is flexible, possesses broad skills spanning product operations and software development, and thrives in a fast-paced, high-impact environment.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Deploy, upgrade, operate, and scale a suite of mission-critical GNC products and services
• Provision and maintain virtual and physical servers
• Work with SpaceX HPC team to monitor and maintain an HPC cluster consisting of tens of thousands of CPUs.
• Closely collaborate with GNC software engineers to create highly operable and maintainable products
• Monitoring and incident response for web applications and services
• Manage the underlying computational infrastructure of GNC in collaboration with IT stakeholders
• Engage in and improve the whole lifecycle of services from whiteboard to operational
• Make data-driven recommendations for future hardware purchases
• Practice sustainable incident response and postmortems
• Provide end-user support to GNC engineering for products by becoming an expert on analysis applications and support users in troubleshooting and pointing to features
• Configure automated deployment pipelines for web apps
• Develop or improve GNC web apps and tools for better usability, maintainability, and robustness
• Demo and document new software changes such as operating system upgrades, shared filesystem changes, or major tool rollouts
• Focus on performance bottlenecks and performance improvement techniques

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information systems/IT, engineering, math, or scientific discipline and 2+ years of software development experience OR 4+ years of professional experience building software with site reliability or DevOps in lieu of a degree
• Experience with Linux operating systems
• Experience with Python and Python based development frameworks

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• 2+ years of systems administration, site reliability engineering, or DevOps experience
• 2+ years of experience with Python and Python-based development frameworks
• 2+ years of Linux experience
• Expertise with Docker, Vagrant, and Kubernetes or similar technologies
• Extensive Experience with configuration management tools such as Ansible, Puppet, Terraform
• Experience with build systems (Make, Bazel / Pants / Buck, Gradle) and package management tools (pip, npm)
• Strong understanding of virtualization and hypervisor technologies
• Understanding of databases and data modeling
• Experience with automatically managing dozens or hundreds of servers
• Strong networking knowledge of TCP/IP
• Experience scaling web applications and optimizing applications for performance
• Experience with managing on-prem infrastructure, including direct experience managing GPU fleets
• Experience with high-performance computing systems or large-scale data analysis systems
• Must be comfortable working with mission-critical and sensitive systems, with a sense of urgency appropriate to the responsibilities
• Ability and willingness to obtain a Top Secret clearance

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS: 

• An active clearance may provide the opportunity for you to work on sensitive SpaceX missions; if so, you will be subject to pre-employment drug and random drug and alcohol testing 
• Willing to work extended hours and weekends when needed to meet critical deadlines

SR. SOFTWARE ENGINEER (SPECIAL PROJECTS) - TOP SECRET CLEARANCE

As a Software Engineer on the Special Projects team of the Falcon and Dragon Engineering organization, you will design and implement software and firmware for the next generation of avionics systems at SpaceX. You will be responsible for ensuring your system behaves as expected and troubleshoot when necessary. You will have a direct impact on our ability to launch SpaceX systems frequently, safely, and reliably.

Aerospace experience is not required to be successful here - we want our engineers to bring fresh ideas from all areas. We look for engineers who love solving problems and seek to make an impact on an inspiring mission. As we expand this team, we're looking for versatile, motivated, and collaborative engineers. Our team is involved in designing the vehicle systems at every phase of development. Our software engineers are responsible for the life cycle of the software they create, including development, testing, and operational support.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Design and deliver high-quality software and firmware for common processors and micro-controllers
• Support launch operations
• Collaborate with peers and customers
• Bring up and validate devices that communicate-to and fly-in space
• Analyze test results and bugs which require in-depth investigations
• Hands-on integration and troubleshooting of flight hardware/software systems
• Work in a dynamic environment with changing needs, requirements, and challenges

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, data science, engineering, math, physics, or scientific discipline; OR 2+ years of professional experience in writing software in lieu of a degree
• 5+ years of experience in software development with C++ or C languages
• Active Top Secret, Top Secret SCI, or DOE Level Q clearance

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Development experience with microcontrollers
• Strong software engineering fundamentals in C++
• Solid fundamental knowledge of computer architecture and networks
• Familiarity with NXP microcontrollers
• Commitment to high standard of software development, including adherence to software process and best practices
• Linux and bash shell scripting
• Understanding of verification methodologies
• Excellent communication & documentation skills, and ability to collaborate in multidisciplinary environments

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Must be available to work extended hours and weekends when needed to meet critical deadlines
• This position requires successfully obtaining and maintaining a Top Secret Security Clearance as a condition of employment. While the clearance may not be immediately necessary upon hire, we encourage you to initiate the application process promptly upon accepting this offer. Your ability to secure the necessary clearance is essential for fulfilling key responsibilities of the role. Should you be unable to obtain it, SpaceX reserves the right to modify or terminate your employment to align with operational needs.

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:    
Pay Range:    
Software Engineer/Senior: $160,000.00 - $225,000.00/per year    
    
Your actual level and base salary will be determined on a case-by-case basis and may vary based on the following considerations: job-related knowledge and skills, education, and experience.

Base salary is just one part of your total rewards package at SpaceX. You may also be eligible for long-term incentives, in the form of company stock, stock options, or long-term cash awards, as well as potential discretionary bonuses and the ability to purchase additional stock at a discount through an Employee Stock Purchase Plan. You will also receive access to comprehensive medical, vision, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short and long-term disability insurance, life insurance, paid parental leave, and various other discounts and perks. You may also accrue 3 weeks of paid vacation and will be eligible for 10 or more paid holidays per year. Employees accrue paid sick leave pursuant to Company policy which satisfies or exceeds the accrual, carryover, and use requirements of the law.