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.
IT WINDOWS SYSTEMS ENGINEER
SpaceX is looking for an experienced engineer with deep knowledge and broad experience across Microsoft-based technologies. This employee will be a member of the Information Technology Windows Infrastructure team and will support systems all across SpaceX. The ideal candidate will be flexible and flourish in a fast paced and challenging environment, and will exercise a high degree of responsibility for the processes, systems, and tools you create and manage; all supporting the goal of making humanity an interplanetary species.
RESPONSIBILITIES:
- Work closely with other SpaceX engineers to gather requirements, research, evaluate, design, plan, deploy, and support Microsoft enterprise software platforms and related technologies in a world-class environment that meets the needs of the demanding SpaceX engineering teams.
- Build highly-resilient, high-performance, scalable, and flexible systems.
- Make recommendations, justify, and implement improvements using an accepted change control methodology.
- Work within diverse groups to design and deliver creative solutions and resolve problems in a timely and proactive manner by interacting with internal business units.
- Drive designs, implementations, and support in the following areas:
- Architecture: making considerations for interoperability, scale, efficiency, and business continuity for users within and across environments.
- Security: building PKI standards and ensuring access and data is protected. KMS, HSM, certificate management, encryption methods, etc.
- Scripting and automation: developing solutions to address issues at scale.
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS:
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or a STEM discipline and 3+ years of systems engineering experience; OR 5+ years of systems engineering experience in lieu of a degree.
- Experience with Windows operating system engineering and architecture.
PREFERRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:
- Experience with Active Directory, Kerberos, and multi-platform authentication and identification environments.
- Experience (including the ability to setup, configure, upgrade, manage, and troubleshoot) with Windows-based systems and services (i.e. Active Directory Certificate Services, Active Directory Federation Services in both physical and virtual environments).
- Experience with cryptography fundamentals: PKI standards, data encryption or key management.
- Expertise in creating repeatable, reliable, scalable systems architectures, with high availability, fault tolerance, performance tuning, monitoring, and statistics/metrics collection.
- Expert level PowerShell experience; beyond running cmdlets, experience with writing larger scripts and automation-driven processes.
- Experience in building robust monitoring and automated remediation services for critical systems (SCOM, Icinga, or equivalent).
- Experience with hybrid scenarios with EntraID and Active Directory.
- Experience with configuration management, provisioning, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, and other DevOps and/or SRE best practices, concepts and tools.
- Ability to support deployment of HSMs and cryptographic solutions.
- Understanding of developing web and C#/. Net applications and build processes.
- Networking experience in IPv4, switching, routing, firewalls and high availability architecture.
- Comfortable working with mission critical and sensitive systems, with a sense of urgency appropriate to the responsibilities.
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to communicate with internal/external customers, vendors, management etc. in both formal and informal situations.
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS:
- Willing to work extended hours and weekends as needed.
ITAR REQUIREMENTS:
- 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. Learn more about the ITAR here.
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.
Applicants wishing to view a copy of SpaceX’s Affirmative Action Plan for veterans and individuals with disabilities, or applicants requiring reasonable accommodation to the application/interview process should reach out to [email protected].
Skills Required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a STEM discipline and 3+ years of systems engineering experience
- 5+ years of systems engineering experience in lieu of a bachelor's degree
- Experience with Windows operating system engineering and architecture
- Experience with Active Directory, Kerberos, and multi-platform authentication and identification environments
- Experience configuring, upgrading, managing, and troubleshooting Windows-based systems and services, including Active Directory Certificate Services and Active Directory Federation Services
- Experience with cryptography fundamentals, PKI standards, data encryption, or key management
- Expertise in scalable systems architecture, high availability, fault tolerance, performance tuning, monitoring, and metrics collection
- Expert-level PowerShell experience, including larger scripts and automation-driven processes
- Experience building monitoring and automated remediation services using SCOM, Icinga, or equivalent
- Experience with hybrid Entra ID and Active Directory environments
- Experience with configuration management, provisioning, CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code, DevOps, or SRE practices
- Ability to support deployment of HSMs and cryptographic solutions
- Understanding of web and C#/.NET application development and build processes
- Networking experience with IPv4, switching, routing, firewalls, and high-availability architecture
- Excellent communication skills with internal and external customers, vendors, and management
- Willingness to work extended hours and weekends as needed
- Must satisfy applicable ITAR eligibility requirements or be eligible to obtain required U.S. Department of State authorizations
SpaceX Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about SpaceX and has not been reviewed or approved by SpaceX.
-
Equity Value & Accessibility — Equity grants are a core part of total compensation, with periodic company-run tender offers that create liquidity before any public listing. These mechanisms can make the equity component feel materially valuable in practice.
-
Healthcare Strength — The package includes comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage, with on-site clinics and health resources at major sites. This breadth of coverage is presented as a strong element of the offering.
-
Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Major locations feature on-site amenities such as fitness facilities, food/coffee, clinics, and other conveniences. These lifestyle perks enhance day-to-day value alongside cash and equity.
SpaceX Insights
What We Do
SpaceX designs, manufactures and launches the world’s most advanced rockets and spacecraft. The company was founded in 2002 by Elon Musk to revolutionize space transportation, with the ultimate goal of making life multiplanetary. SpaceX has gained worldwide attention for a series of historic milestones. It is the only private company ever to return a spacecraft from low-Earth orbit, which it first accomplished in December 2010. The company made history again in May 2012 when its Dragon spacecraft attached to the International Space Station, exchanged cargo payloads, and returned safely to Earth — a technically challenging feat previously accomplished only by governments. Since then Dragon has delivered cargo to and from the space station multiple times, providing regular cargo resupply missions for NASA.
