Site Reliability Engineer (High Performance Computing)

Spacex; Hawthorne (CA); Hybrid; USD 125,000 - 195,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Stock options

401(k) retirement plan

Paid vacation & holidays

Job summary

SpaceX in Hawthorne, CA is seeking a Site Reliability Engineer for High Performance Computing to own the Linux, infrastructure as code, storage, and user-facing services across the HPC platform.

You will reduce toil through automation, build cluster observability, and collaborate with HPC systems engineers and engineers from across SpaceX to deliver reliable, scalable compute and storage for mission-critical workloads.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or 2+ years production infra experience
• 2+ years Linux in production
• 2+ years operating production infrastructure, including monitoring, debugging, and repairs

Responsibilities

• Participate in on-call rotation
• Manage node lifecycle with infrastructure as code: OS images, firmware, configuration, kernel and driver stack
• Build observability for HPC admins and end users: cluster, node, and storage health signals
• Reduce toil with automation and write software to automate repetitive tasks
• Sustainably manage compute and storage resources
• Lead capacity planning with users across SpaceX to forecast tomorrow's compute/storage needs
• Collaborate with HPC engineers and other disciplines on operable, maintainable infrastructure

Skills

SRE/DevOps experience

Linux in production

Infrastructure as code

Monitoring & alerting

Python or scripting

Containers (Docker, Podman)

Kubernetes on-prem

Distributed storage

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent in CS/Engineering/Math/Science

Tools

Prometheus

Grafana

Nagios

Ansible

Terraform

Puppet

Docker

Kubernetes

Slurm

Job description

Site Reliability Engineer (High Performance Computing)

Hawthorne, CA

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.

SpaceX HPC is a shared compute platform used across the company — vehicle and structures simulation, machine learning, AI inference, and more. We support every program at SpaceX to design and operate the worlds most advanced rockets and satellites. This role exists to put a real Site Reliability Engineer operating model on these capabilities and accelerating the world class engineering at SpaceX: toil reduction, automation, observability, and a sustainable incident process.

We are looking for a Site Reliability Engineer who wants to own everything from Linux machines and our Infrastructure as Code, storage, and user facing applications – the whole ecosystem as a product, not as a ticket queue. You do not need a prior HPC title. You do need production instincts — you have operated real infrastructure, you write code to delete toil, and you care about whether users can actually get work done, not just whether nodes ping. You’ll work alongside HPC systems engineers who design and commission clusters to help make them more reliable and provide world class services for world class engineers.

Aerospace experience is not required. We value engineers who treat teammates with fairness and respect, who are self-critical, and who will take ownership of hard production problems.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Participate in the team's on-call rotation; practice sustainable incident response and blameless postmortems
• Manage node lifecycle with infrastructure as code: OS images, firmware, configuration management, kernel and driver stack
• Build observability for both HPC administrators and end users — cluster, node, and storage health for operators, and job/workflow-level signal for the people running work on the platform
• Reduce toil with automation; split time between operating production systems and writing the software that makes that work smaller
• Sustainably manage resources, including compute and storage
• Lead capacity planning with users across the company: understand what they will need next, and turn that into a concrete picture of tomorrow's compute and storage
• Collaborate with HPC systems engineers and with engineers across all disciplines across the company on operable, maintainable infrastructure

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, math, or a scientific discipline; OR 2+ years of professional experience operating production infrastructure in lieu of a degree
• 2+ years of experience with Linux operating systems in production
• 2+ years of experience operating production infrastructure (servers, services, or networks), including monitoring, debugging, and repairing what you own

PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:

• 2+ years of professional experience in SRE, DevOps, or production infrastructure engineering
• Experience with monitoring and alerting (Prometheus, Grafana, Nagios, or similar)
• Experience deploying and maintaining configuration management or infrastructure as code (Ansible, Puppet, Terraform, or similar)
• Experience writing scripts/code (eg. Python or similar languages) to automate common tasks
• Experience with containers (Docker, Podman, Singularity/Apptainer)
• Experience with Kubernetes administration for on-premise deployment
• Experience with distributed or high-performance storage (VAST or similar), including capacity, performance, and lifecycle management
• Familiarity with HPC clusters, schedulers (Slurm, PBS, LSF), or GPU compute — not required; we will teach this
• Familiarity with scientific computing (CFD, FEA) and/or ML training workloads (PyTorch, TensorFlow, CUDA) and/or AI inference workloads
• Good understanding of version control, testing, continuous integration, build, deployment and monitoring
• Ability to communicate clearly with users, peers, and vendors in both incident and design settings
• Comfortable working with mission-critical and sensitive systems, with a sense of urgency appropriate to the responsibilities
• Eligibility for access to classified material up to TS/SCI with polygraph

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:

• Position is based in Hawthorne, CA and is primarily on-site
• Must be able to participate in an on-call rotation
• Must be willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed for incidents, cluster bring-up, and time-critical failures

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS:

Pay Range:

Level 1: $125,000.00 - $160,000.00

Level 2: $145,000.00 - $195,000.00

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.

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 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 coverage, vision coverage, and dental coverage, access to a 401(k) retirement plan, short-term disability insurance, long-term disability insurance, life insurance, paid parental leave, and various other discounts and perks. You may also accrue 3 weeks of paid vacation and will be eligible for 10 or more paid holidays per year. Employees accrue paid sick leave pursuant to Company policy which satisfies or exceeds the accrual, carryover, and use requirements of the law.

• 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.

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.

As set forth in SpaceX’s Equal Employment Opportunity policy,we do not discriminate on the basis of any protected group status under any applicable law.