As a principal satellite engineer, you will lead implementation and test for spacecraft systems in support of our diverse customer opportunities. You will be part of the larger Spacecraft Engineering organization and interact with all engineering disciplines to resolve new engineering issues as they arise.

The spacecraft engineering team in Hawthorne is growing to support our R&D satellite programs that are pushing the boundaries of in-space capabilities. Our missions support scientific research, classified national security space and commercial opportunities. As we grow our classified mission manifest, we are looking for hardware development engineers to join our team.On the electrical design team, you have the exciting opportunity to be responsible for flight hardware! You will demonstrate extreme ownership and a deep understanding of your hardware through detailed and thorough design, hardware bring-up/characterization/testing, and requirements generation/verification and by seeing your hardware through all aspects of its life cycle. With a quickly growing program, there is a wide range of engaging opportunities from blank-sheet design through on-orbit troubleshooting. You will also work with many cross-disciplinary teams and be required to think at a system level to ensure that your design is viable and to help drive the mission to success. Our development timelines are aggressive and you will need to rigorously explore solutions for previously unsolved or unknown problems.We’re looking for people who want to dive in and get their hands dirty and those who are not afraid to make important decisions and do due diligence to provide data driven rationale. Every day we push the limits of what is possible through innovation, determination, and teamwork and we’re only just beginning.An active Top Secret security clearance, or the ability to obtain one, is desired but not required.

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.