Senior Wet Process Engineer, Solar Cells – High-Volume

SPACE EXPLORATION TECHNOLOGIES CORP; Bastrop, Northern (TX, KY); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

SpaceX seeks a Sr. Wet Process Equipment Engineer for Solar Cells (Starlink) in Bastrop, TX. You will own and scale wet processing tools used to manufacture silicon heterojunction solar cells, ensuring uptime and reliability in a high‑volume environment.

You will lead maintenance strategies, work with vendors, and partner with process engineers to implement new hardware requirements for next‑gen production, contributing to SpaceX’s Starlink network and future missions.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in a technical discipline and hands‑on experience with chemical process equipment in high‑volume manufacturing.
• Experience handling hazardous chemicals safely in semiconductor or solar manufacturing settings.
• Ability to own, maintain, and scale wet processing tools for silicon solar cells or similar technologies.
• Proven track record improving equipment uptime, reliability, and throughput in 24/7 operations.
• Familiarity with preventive/predictive maintenance, spares programs, and tool matching.

Responsibilities

• Install, qualify, maintain, and continuously improve high-throughput wet texturing and preclean equipment.
• Drive equipment reliability and uptime for large-volume production with minimal downtime.
• Develop preventive and predictive maintenance strategies and spare parts programs.
• Lead root cause analysis and corrective actions on equipment issues, including delivery systems and automation.
• Collaborate with process engineers for new hardware requirements and platform scaling.
• Evaluate next-generation tools to support 1GW+ per tool scale production.

Skills

Chemical process equipment ownership

High-volume manufacturing

Equipment reliability

Hazardous chemical handling

Root cause analysis

Vendor collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering

Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering

Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering

Tools

JMP

Minitab

Job description

SpaceX seeks a Sr. Wet Process Equipment Engineer for Solar Cells (Starlink) in Bastrop, TX. You will own and scale wet processing tools used to manufacture silicon heterojunction solar cells, ensuring uptime and reliability in a high‑volume environment.

You will lead maintenance strategies, work with vendors, and partner with process engineers to implement new hardware requirements for next‑gen production, contributing to SpaceX’s Starlink network and future missions.