Senior CVD Equipment Engineer, Solar Cells

SpaceX; Texas; On-site; USD 120,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

SpaceX seeks a Sr. CVD Equipment Engineer, Solar Cells (Starlink) to own PECVD equipment for silicon heterojunction solar cells at scale.

You will partner with the CVD Process Engineering team to ensure tool uptime, performance, and reliability for high-volume production supporting Starlink and Starship programs. You will lead maintenance strategies, run experiments, and collaborate with vendors to optimize equipment while meeting cleanroom and safety standards across a global manufacturing

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in engineering or related field.
• 5+ years of hands-on experience owning and maintaining CVD or PECVD equipment in a high-volume setting.
• Experience handling flammable, toxic, corrosive, and/or hazardous chemicals safely.

Responsibilities

• Install, qualify, maintain, and improve high-throughput PECVD equipment for silicon solar cell manufacturing.
• Drive uptime and reliability for very large volume production with minimal downtime.
• Run experiments, analyze data to improve capacity, reduce tool variation, and improve defect performance.
• Develop preventive and predictive maintenance strategies and spare parts programs.
• Lead root-cause analyses and corrective actions on equipment issues including vacuum systems and RF generators.
• Collaborate with Process Engineers to implement new process requirements on existing/future platforms.
• Evaluate next-generation PECVD tools for 1GW+ scale production.
• Work with vendors on equipment design improvements and upgrades.
• Establish equipment performance metrics and implement SPC for hardware stability.
• Ensure compliance with cleanroom, safety, and high-reliability standards.
• Analyze production processes from first principles and communicate status to leadership.

Skills

CVD equipment ownership

PECVD equipment

vacuum systems

RF plasma systems

gas delivery

temperature control

automation

reliability engineering

project management

HJT solar cells

Education

Bachelor's degree in engineering

Tools

JMP

Minitab

Job description

SpaceX seeks a Sr. CVD Equipment Engineer, Solar Cells (Starlink) to own PECVD equipment for silicon heterojunction solar cells at scale.

You will partner with the CVD Process Engineering team to ensure tool uptime, performance, and reliability for high-volume production supporting Starlink and Starship programs. You will lead maintenance strategies, run experiments, and collaborate with vendors to optimize equipment while meeting cleanroom and safety standards across a global manufacturing