Starship Welding Engineer: Advanced Weld & NDE

SPACE EXPLORATION TECHNOLOGIES CORP; Northern (KY); Hybrid; USD 90,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

SpaceX is seeking a Welding Engineer (Starship) to support the development of Starship launch vehicles. The welding engineer will help develop, qualify, and optimize welding designs and processes.

The engineer will interface daily with design-and-build engineers to make welding improvements and enforce standardized practices and procedures on multiple welded assemblies. The position requires a Bachelor’s degree in engineering and 1+ years of hands-on fabrication or testing.

Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in engineering required; 1+ years hands-on fabrication, manufacturing, or testing welded assemblies.
• Master’s degree in welding engineering or related program preferred.
• Experience with stainless steel, nickel-based, titanium, copper, and aluminum alloys.
• Knowledge of welding processes including EB, laser, plasma arc, resistance, friction-stir, TIG, MMA.
• Robot programming experience for automated welding solutions.
• Tooling design to reduce distortion and improve weld quality.
• Familiarity with standards (ASTM E8, E399, E740; ISO 15653; AWS D17.X/C7.X).
• Willingness to work long hours and weekends as needed.

Responsibilities

• Develop, qualify, and optimize weld processes and parameters for multiple welding processes.
• Support production operations on full-scale welded assemblies in a fast-paced environment.
• Support design, manufacturing, and materials engineering with root cause analysis.
• Collaborate with design, tooling, automation, and development engineers to improve welded designs.
• Plan welding qualification test campaigns and interpret mechanical testing and NDE results.
• Work with NDE personnel to interpret weld quality on development and flight hardware.
• Develop and implement improved process control using test and NDE results.
• Set up automated welding solutions to drive consistency.
• Scope out new welding technologies to improve rate/quality/efficiency.

Skills

Welding processes

NDE interpretation

Root cause analysis

Robot programming

Tooling design

Welding process optimization

Education

Bachelor’s degree in engineering

Master’s degree in welding engineering

Tools

Electron beam welding

Laser beam welding

NDE instrumentation

Job description

SpaceX is seeking a Welding Engineer (Starship) to support the development of Starship launch vehicles. The welding engineer will help develop, qualify, and optimize welding designs and processes.

The engineer will interface daily with design-and-build engineers to make welding improvements and enforce standardized practices and procedures on multiple welded assemblies. The position requires a Bachelor’s degree in engineering and 1+ years of hands-on fabrication or testing.