Lead PVD Equipment Engineer - High-Volume Solar Cells

SpaceX; Texas; On-site; USD 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

SpaceX is seeking a Solar Cell PVD Equipment Engineer to own the Physical Vapor Deposition tooling used to manufacture silicon heterojunction solar cells for Starlink production. You will ensure tool availability, uptime, and reliability while collaborating with Process Engineering to meet throughput and quality targets.

The role requires hands-on experience with PVD/sputtering, vacuum systems, RF/DC power, and maintenance programs, plus a bias for safety and cleanroom standards, and occasional

Qualifications

• 2+ years of hands-on experience owning and maintaining PVD or sputtering equipment in a high-volume semiconductor, solar manufacturing, or related environment.
• Experience handling flammable, toxic, corrosive, and/or hazardous chemicals and gases safely.

Responsibilities

• Install, qualify, maintain, and improve high-throughput PVD equipment for heterojunction silicon solar cell manufacturing.
• Drive equipment reliability and uptime to support very large volume production with minimal downtime.
• Develop and execute preventive and predictive maintenance strategies, spare parts programs, and tool matching protocols for high-volume manufacturing.
• Lead root cause analysis and corrective actions on all equipment-related issues, including vacuum systems, sputtering cathodes/targets, RF/DC power supplies, gas delivery, temperature control, and automation.
• Partner with Process Engineers to implement new process requirements on existing and future equipment platforms.
• Evaluate and select next-generation high-throughput PVD tools capable of supporting 1GW+ per tool scale production.
• Work with vendors on equipment design improvements, upgrades, and custom solutions tailored to heterojunction solar cell requirements.
• Establish equipment performance metrics (OEE, MTBF, MTTR) and implement statistical process control for hardware stability.
• Ensure all equipment meets cleanroom, safety, and high-reliability manufacturing standards.
• Analyze production processes and machinery from a first principles, physics-based approach.
• Attend meetings to communicate factory state to leadership with respect to the team's equipment.

Skills

PVD equipment ownership

Sputtering

Vacuum systems

RF/DC power supplies

Failure analysis

Reliability engineering

Project management

Cleanroom safety

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering

Tools

JMP

Minitab

Job description

SpaceX is seeking a Solar Cell PVD Equipment Engineer to own the Physical Vapor Deposition tooling used to manufacture silicon heterojunction solar cells for Starlink production. You will ensure tool availability, uptime, and reliability while collaborating with Process Engineering to meet throughput and quality targets.

The role requires hands-on experience with PVD/sputtering, vacuum systems, RF/DC power, and maintenance programs, plus a bias for safety and cleanroom standards, and occasional