Electrical Engineer, Spacecraft Payloads (Starshield)

ELECTRICAL ENGINEER, SPACECRAFT PAYLOADS (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. As an electrical development engineer on the Starshield team, you will demonstrate extreme ownership through detailed and thorough design, hardware bring-up/characterization/testing, and requirements generation/verification - ultimately seeing your hardware through all aspects of its life cycle.

Starshield is a quickly growing program with a wide range of engaging opportunities from blank-sheet design to on-orbit troubleshooting. You will work with many cross-disciplinary teams and will need to think at a system level to ensure that your design is viable. Our development timelines are quick and you will need to rigorously explore solutions for previously unsolved or unknown problems. Every day we push the limits of what is possible through innovation, determination, and teamwork to drive the mission to success.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Ultimate ownership of ensuring the successful operation of bus and payloads on orbit via the avionics suite
• Electrical architecture and design, product requirements, component selection, analysis, schematic capture, and documentation
• Flight production, development prototyping, vendor selection, and manufacturing
• Circuit and full product bring-up, debugging, troubleshooting, and confidence, acceptance and qualification testing
• Deliver flight hardware on time and active project management through schedule maintenance and status reports
• Integration, full vehicle integrated testing, on-orbit operations support, and data review
• Multidisciplinary coordination with software, firmware, mechanical, PCB layout, environments, integration, harnessing, test, manufacturing, and production teams to deliver a fully functional product
• System engineering efforts to ensure design meets all intents and does not adversely impact other groups or designs
• Drive improvements in reliability and capabilities while minimizing cost and schedule

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or physics
• 1+ years of professional experience designing and delivering electrical hardware (internship and project experience are applicable)

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Master’s degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or similar engineering degree
• 4+ years of professional experience rapidly designing and delivering highly reliable products
• 2+ years of electronic product experience designing electrical hardware from concept through production; strong emphasis on full life cycle development of new hardware products, not small incremental updates to legacy hardware
• 2+ years of experience designing and implementing mixed-signal circuit boards from concept through production using processors, FPGAs, Ethernet, multi-GHz SerDes, DRAM interfaces (DDR4), I2C, SPI, operational amplifiers, analog to digital and digital to analog converters, and power supply components
• 2+ years of professional experience with hands-on testing, troubleshooting, and debugging electronics
• 2+ years of professional experience with fast-paced projects
• Strong understanding of computers and programming languages (Python, C/C++)
• Demonstrated ability to work in a highly cross-functional role
• Ability to work in an autonomously driven and demanding start­up atmosphere
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• Passion for advancing the commercial space industry and human spaceflight
• Active Top Secret or Top Secret SCI clearance, or ability to obtain one desired but not required

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

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:    

Pay range:    
Electrical Hardware Design Engineer/Level I: $100,000.00 - $120,000.00/per year    
Electrical Hardware Design Engineer/Level II: $115,000.00 - $150,000.00/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. Those with an active clearance will receive a 10% differential, up to an additional $15,000 annually, once officially briefed into a classified program.

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. Exempt employees are eligible for 5 days of sick leave per year.