Design Reliability Engineer (Crew Starship)

Starlink; Texas; On-site; USD 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

SpaceX seeks a Design Reliability Engineer for Crew Starship to guide engineering design from concept to flight, ensuring criteria and verification align with mission goals.

You will drive cross-disciplinary collaboration, perform verification reviews, and interact with government customers to certify spacecraft while maintaining strict qualification standards.

Qualifications

• Requires a Bachelor’s degree in an engineering discipline and 1+ years of fabrication, assembly, and/or testing experience.
• Preferred mastery of mechanical design verification, requirements handling, and customer-facing activities.

Responsibilities

• Develop design criteria, requirements, and verification approaches for new systems.
• Ensure design criteria/requirements are followed for flight, launch, and/or recovery systems; provide peer reviews and drive design improvements.
• Lead spacecraft certification efforts with direct interaction with U.S. Government customers; tailor requirements to program goals.
• Review vehicle changes to ensure qualification compliance.

Skills

Customer interface skills

Design verification & reviews

Scripting & data analysis (VB, Matlab,

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering

Master's degree in engineering

Tools

NASTRAN

ABAQUS

ANSYS

Mills

Lathes

Electronics assembly

Composite layup

Job description

SpaceX was founded under the belief that a future where humanity is out exploring the stars is fundamentally more exciting than one where we are not. Today SpaceX is actively developing the technologies to make this possible, with the ultimate goal of enabling human life on Mars.

DESIGN RELIABILITY ENGINEER (CREW STARSHIP)

After 50 years, humankind will once again return to surface of the moon using SpaceX's new vehicle, the Human Landing System (HLS) - this time for good. Leveraging the lessons learned from our flight proven Dragon spacecraft, Falcon and now Starship, HLS will usher in the next era of manned spaceflight and exploration, ultimately allowing us to establish permanent communities on the Moon, Mars, and beyond.

The HLS Design Reliability team is responsible for ensuring that flight hardware and concepts-of-operations lead to successful completion of missions while meeting or exceeding both internal and external design requirements. We perform a unique engineering role, evaluating and guiding engineering designs from concept to flight. We facilitate cross-disciplinary action and problem-solving across all SpaceX programs and staff.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Develop design criteria, requirements, and verification approaches for new systems.
• Ensure that the SpaceX design process & design criteria/requirements are being followed for flight, launch, and/or recovery systems, including:
  • Provide critical peer review and approval of hardware designs during design reviews, and of acceptance and qualification test campaigns.
  • Drive improvements to vehicle design through close integration with hardware teams.
  • Perform verification reviews hardware and systems.
• Ensure that the customer design criteria/requirements are addressed for flight systems, including:
  • Lead spacecraft certification efforts through direct interaction with U.S. Government customers.
  • Tailor and negotiating requirements and verifications to meet program goals.
  • Review vehicle changes to ensure qualification compliance.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor's degree in an engineering discipline.
• 1+ years professional experience in fabrication, assembly, and/or testing.

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• Master's degree in an engineering discipline.
• Experience with aircraft, launch vehicles, spacecraft, or other aerospace systems.
• Experience with aircraft, launch vehicle, or spacecraft requirements and standards.
• Experience with standards and requirement negotiation.
• Excellent customer interface skills.
• Experience with at least one commercial FEA package (NASTRAN, ABAQUS, or ANSYS).
• Hands on experience with various industry standard manufacturing tools, techniques and processes, including mills, lathes, electronics assembly, composite layup, etc.
• Scripting and data analysis experience using Visual Basic, Matlab, Python and Excel.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Must be available to work long hours and weekends as necessary.

ITAR REQUIREMENTS:

• To conform to U.S. Government export regulations, applicant must be a (i) U.S. citizen or national, (ii) U.S. lawful, permanent resident (aka green card holder), (iii) Refugee under 8 U.S.C. § 1157, or (iv) Asylee under 8 U.S.C. § 1158, or be eligible to obtain the required authorizations from the U.S. Department of State. Learn more about the ITAR here.

SpaceX is an Equal Opportunity Employer; employment with SpaceX is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.

Applicants wishing to view a copy of SpaceX's Aff... or applicants requiring reasonable accommodation to the application/interview process should reach out to [e-mail].